Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Original Children of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, Svetlana Vetrova, Scott Hunter (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Amnesia, Canon - TV, Future Fic, Alternate Universe - Future, Brain Damage, Fluff and Angst, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Medical Inaccuracies, Post-Episode: s01e06 The Cottage (Heated Rivalry), Family, Spoilers for Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), No Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Children of Characters, Domestic Fluff, LGBTQ Themes, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Fluff, References to Depression, Comfort/Angst, Angst, No Sex, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Parent Shane Hollander, Parent Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of All the Smallest Things

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-17 Completed: 2026-03-19 Words: 40,790 Chapters: 20/20

The Importance of Strawberries

Summary

“I’m sorry I’m not him,” Shane says, looking away.

“Who?”

“Future me. Whoever you fell in love with.” What’s unsaid hangs in the air: whoever fell in love with you. Because this Shane – 2010 Shane – doesn’t love him. Is amused by their daily lessons, comforted by his presence, even grateful. But love?

“That’s the thing, Shane,” Ilya says. His eyes are shining. “You are, right now, exactly who I fell in love with.”

In 2031, Shane wakes up in the hospital certain that it's 2010. Ilya is there to remind him of the two decades he's missed and the life they've built along the way.

Notes

Completed as of 3/19/26! This is the amnesia fic I've been wanting to read, i.e., a devastatingly slow reveal of their lives together.

This absolute chokehold of a show has awoken me from a years-long writing hiatus and I'm just here to have fun and enjoy these two beautiful characters Rachel and Jacob have given us! This is TV compliant but not book compliant. I have not read the books, but I have read many spoilers and fics based on The Long Game, so some book canon makes it in here, but mainly the post-Episode 6 content is not compliant at all. Also, I'm here for the amnesia trope and not for the medical details. This is definitely not how brain injury works.

CW for a very brief mention of current events - genocide, immigration enforcement and residential schools - in Chapter 2; references to depression in Chapter 10; references to homophobia in Chapters 10 & 13.

In loving dedication to my fellow acespecs who battled our way through this show with one eye closed, but still loved it anyway. You are SEEN!

• Translation into Português brasileiro available: A Importância dos Morangos - Tradução de The Importance of Strawberries by Laraqmdealmeida

Chapter 1: Adjust

MONTREAL

OCTOBER 2031

Before he blacks out, he knows this time is different. This is the one – the end. The career-ending injury he couldn’t plan for in lists or timelines. There’s a fiery-hot ringing in his ears and an icicle-sharp shudder in his ribs and his left ankle feels like a tube sock filled with ground beef and shrapnel. There’s blood, he sees it, not sure from where. It’s hard to keep his eyes open. The arena lights snap-crackle-pop white and red behind his eyelids. He hears a voice, frantic. “Shane. Shane.” A hand holds his. Warm.

“Okay,” he tries to say. He’s not sure if it comes out right, or at all. “I’m okay.”

He wants to ask something, tries to force the words to his lips. “Good, good, keep talking,” someone encourages. A medic. He’s on the backboard now; he’s been here before. The weightless feeling is comforting.

He tries again, remembers what he wanted to ask. Urgent. Things depend on it. He can’t hear his own voice. White lights, red lights. Eyes closed but everything is fireworks. “Did we win?”

---------------

His ankle no longer hurts because his ankle no longer exists, as far as his brain is concerned. Completely numb – his whole leg, really – he sees it, suspended from a harness and braced in spindly metal, bandaged and plastered in fresh-as-snow white, but it doesn’t feel connected to his body. It’s like looking at a sculpture of a leg, someone else’s leg. Just, a random leg.

He’s still a bit loopy. An IV line curls out of his arm and an oximeter pinches the index finger of his right hand. Bandages surround his scalp in a warm hug. His throat is sore and gravelly. Apparently there had been a breathing tube; he doesn’t remember.

A doctor, or nurse, someone in scrubs, had been there as he woke from a viscous fog of sleep and morphine. He understood, somewhat, what had happened. A fall on the ice. Surgery; he’d been unconscious. Not sure how long. Since then, there’s been an MRI, a CT, and – what was the other one? An EEG. That one was fun, the little metal discs on his head, cold and alien, like something out of an X Squad film.

They asked him a battery of questions. Had him fill out a worksheet where he drew a clock, identified little cartoon illustrations of a tiger and a duck. The doctor asked him to name as many words as he could that begin with the letter B. Button. Burger. Blazer. Bulldog. Boring. The doctor read him a string of numbers, asked him to repeat it backwards.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Hospital.”

“What city?”

“Montreal.”

“What month is it?”

“October.”

“Good. Who is the Prime Minister?”

“Stephen Harper.”

The doctor paused to write something down, then continued with more questions.

He wants to know where his parents are. Just waiting on the doctor’s okay for a visit, the nurse assures. He could picture his mom, worried, pacing. Making a plan for LTIR. And his dad. Probably distracting himself, reading an article about stock prices, or something. Taking his mom’s hand, now and then, and telling her to be still. Reminding her to breathe.

So he waits. Dozes off; or maybe sleeps all night. He’s not sure. He wakes up to the room unchanged. His senses are dull with drugs, or exhaustion, or both; the fluorescent lights that would normally make him tense up from their buzzing brightness, instead emit a shadowy soft glow that makes things seem greyscale. His tongue is thick in his mouth, dry.

There’s no clock in the room. No window. The walls are white, pillow is white, the sheets are white, his leg is cast in white. He feels like he’s inside a paper airplane that could tip into a tailspin at the slightest breeze.

When the door finally swings open, it isn’t his parents who walk into the room.

Something rises in Shane’s throat, fear cloaked in anger. Ilya fucking Rozanov. He strides in like he owns the place, like he belongs there, wearing this infuriating certainty – same as when they had hooked up, once. Same as when they had faced off only hours before.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Shane whispers urgently. “You can’t be here.” The soft beeps of the heart monitor grow closer together, broadcasting his panic.

“It’s okay,” Rozanov says curtly. “Shh. Doctor is coming.”

“Seriously—”

“I am glad you are alive,” Rozanov interrupts. “I was worried.”

“Why were you worried?”

He shrugs. “Was very bad fall. Do you remember?” He settles into a chair that’s tucked in the corner. He sits there, hunched forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped against his chin as though in prayer.

“I—” Shane pauses. “I’m not sure.”

“Metros left wing flipped you onto the ice. New guy. Giraud.”

“Giraud—who? One of mine?”

Rozanov swallows. There’s something off-kilter about him that Shane can’t place. Besides the fact that he’s here; Rozanov is here. Panic beats in Shane’s chest. No one can know.

“You have to leave,” Shane hisses.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rozanov says softly. “We wait for doctor now, huh?”

Shane presses his head back into the pillow. He’s too tired to make sense of any of it. The heart monitor slows back to its steady metronome.

“Okay,” Shane agrees, exhaling. “We wait.”

And they do. It’s silent but not. White noise in the white room. A heart monitor, an air conditioner, the PA: Dr. Jayaram to Cardiology. Shane inspects Rozanov where he sits, statue-still. He can’t place a finger on it. It’s like the guy’s outline, once angular and harsh, has been redrawn by a watercolourist. This is a watercolour illustration of Ilya Rozanov, soft and translucent, like a Beatrix Potter storybook. Man, these are some good drugs.

A knock on the door, and a woman enters. She’s tall and serious and honestly reminds Shane more of Rozanov than Rozanov does right now. Her jaw is set grimly. She’s accompanied by a shorter, greying man and a woman with hair swept back into a crisp ballerina’s bun. “Good afternoon, Mr. Hollander,” she says with a Québécois lilt. “My name is Dr. Anne Thibault and I am Chief of Neurosurgery. I’ve brought my colleagues Dr. Ismail from Occupational Therapy and Dr. Tremblay from Psychiatry to consult.”

“Okay.” Shane nods, blinking. “Sorry—when are my parents coming?”

Rozanov pipes up from the corner, “They are on their way. It’s okay.”

“Okay,” Shane repeats. “Yeah. Okay.” He doesn’t have it in him to wonder for too long why Rozanov knows his parents’ whereabouts. He doesn’t even care anymore that they’re together, in a room, in front of people. The illogic is so dream-like, in this white white room. He can’t feel his left leg. His parents are on their way. Just roll with it.

Dr. Thibault clears her throat. “Mr. Hollander, you have suffered a blunt-force traumatic brain injury which triggered an ischemic event.”

“Ischemic—?”

“You’ve experienced a small stroke,” Dr. Tremblay clarifies. He has a comforting voice. Warm. It makes Shane think of his dad.

“A stroke.” What the fuck. A stroke at nineteen? His rookie season has barely even started. “Am I—will I be able to play hockey?”

Dr. Ismail tilts her head. “Well, the leg might be a bit of a barrier to that, for now.”

Dr. Thibault, clearly, does not appreciate her colleague’s sense of humour. She shakes her head. “We conducted a craniotomy to stem the bleeding and repair the damaged blood vessel. We kept you in a medically-induced coma for seventy-two hours to monitor the swelling in your brain.”

Dr. Tremblay chimes in now. “The stroke occurred in a part of your brain called the temporal lobe.” Shane nods as though he understands; he doesn’t. The doctor continues, “Though the affected vessel was only on the surface cortical tissue, the subsequent bleeding and swelling may have affected an interior structure, called the amygdala.”

Dr. Thibault looks at Rozanov, in the corner, then down at her clipboard. She offers the clipboard to Shane.

He takes it, eyebrows weaving together as he looks over the black-and-white scan. “This is my brain, I guess?”

“Ouais. Do you see the small dark area near the centre right?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s quite small. Here—” She leans over and points with the back of her pen.

“Okay, yeah.” Shane tries not to flinch as Rozanov unfurls from the chair and strides closer, leaning over his bedside to look.

“This is the location of the stroke. Very close to the part of the brain that stores long-term memory.”

Beside him, Shane feels Rozanov tense up. “It is damaged?” Rozanov asks quietly. His voice is tight.

Dr. Thibault shakes her head. “It is our conclusion, Mr. Hollander, that you are experiencing a condition called retrograde amnesia.”

“Amnesia—like, forgetting things?” He tries to sit forward, can’t, because of his leg. He digs his elbows into the bed, frustrated. “Because I remember everything fine. Before I got hit—Boston had the puck, and—”

“Mr. Hollander, when you awoke after surgery, you completed a series of assessments. You answered several questions and responded to some cognitive tests. May I ask you those questions again?”

“Sure—”

“What month is it?”

“October.”

“And what year?”

“2010.” He’s sure of it, but he can tell by the way Dr. Thibault and Dr. Tremblay and Dr. Ismail and even fucking Rozanov are looking at him, that he shouldn’t be sure of it. He’s failed the test.

“2011?” he offers. His heart beats faster. Distantly, he hears: Dr. Jayaram to Cardiology.

“I understand this may be very difficult for you, Mr. Hollander. We have spoken with Mr. Rozanov and our counselling department, and believe it is best to inform you transparently, that the year is presently two-thousand and thirty-one.”

Shane chokes out a laugh. “Well that makes no sense. That’s like, twenty years from now.”

Dr. Tremblay and Dr. Ismail exchange glances. Dr. Tremblay speaks first. “My department is going to set you up with a counsellor to help you—adjust.”

“Adjust?”

Rozanov is still staring at the brain scan, his jaw set firmly. “Dr. Thibault, how long is this expected to last?” he asks.

Dr. Thibault shakes her head. “I can’t know for certain.”

“But you did MRI, yes?” Rozanov’s voice grows louder.

“It is my belief that the damage is superficial. The episode was small and concentrated in the cortical tissue. The surgery was successful with no complications. The patient has retained his motor, speech, and core cognitive functions.”

Now Dr. Ismail speaks, clearing her throat. She seems young for a doctor. “We believe that with counselling, cognitive and physical therapy, the support of loved ones, and time to heal, Mr. Hollander will recover his memory.”

“But how long will it be?” Rozanov is pleading now, panicked.

Finally, the bewilderment, the anger-fear, claws out of Shane, primal, uncomprehending fury. “Why do you care, Rozanov? Why the fuck are you even here?”

A shadow crosses Rozanov’s eyes, and the white white room feels darker. “I just do, Shane. I just care, and I am here.”

To be called by his first name by this man, and so tenderly. This one-night stand fraught with fear and curiosity and excitement and secrecy. Shane searches Rozanov’s face, and he realizes. The watercolouriness, the soft edges – it’s age. Creases at his eyes and the corners of his lips. Wisps of grey in his hair. Around his neck, a gold cross, and a ring.

Shane breathes out shakily. “Is it—is it really 2031?”

Rozanov nods. “Yes,” he whispers.

“Are we, like, dating now?”

Rozanov laughs, and the laugh reaches his eyes, and it’s nice. “You could say that, yes.”

“Okay.” Shane can hear his mother’s steady voice in his head: What’s the plan? “Okay,” he repeats, louder. He looks up at the three doctors, who are watching them as though sharing a bucket of popcorn between them. “What happens now?”

The doctors enumerate a multi-week schedule of appointments: counselling, cognitive testing, x-rays on his ankle (a clean break – twelve to sixteen weeks, Dr. Ismail informs), occupational therapy, physical therapy, nutrition, check-ups, check-ins, and strict instructions to stay away from screens and get as much rest as he can.

Dr. Ismail is the last to leave. She turns around at the door, addressing them brightly. “You know, I’m a really big fan.” Then she’s gone, and it’s just them.

Silence, for a beat. Shane laughs uncomfortably. This is all a dream, or a prank, or something. 2031—that would make him like, forty. No way. And dating Rozanov? Publicly? Somehow, even more preposterous than leaping twenty years into the future. He laughs again, for real now, and says what he’s thinking.

“This is ridiculous.”

Rozanov laughs at that, too, and now they’re both laughing, and it’s too much because Shane’s ribs hurt and his head hurts and his leg is starting to hurt now, too. It’s back! His leg exists again. That is good, maybe. Maybe not. It hurts. Everything hurts.

“Okay, okay, shhh,” Rozanov says, catching his breath. “You are in pain. I get the nurse. And I’ll see if your parents are here.”

“Thanks, Rozanov,” Shane says. “I really want to see them.”

“I’m sure.” He moves toward the door, then pauses. “Can I ask you a favour?”

“I guess so.”

Rozanov’s gaze darts to the floor, then back to Shane’s eyes. His brow softens. “Could you call me Ilya?”

“Yeah. Yes, sure.” Shane nods his head against the pillow. “Ilya. Sure.”

Ilya holds his gaze for a moment longer, nods, bites his lip. “Okay, I go now. Get some rest.”

When Nurse Persaud arrives a few minutes later, she brings with her a plastic bag. “Personal effects,” she explains, handing it to Shane. “They had to remove any metal for the MRI.”

Shane inspects the bag while she adjusts his IV drip. The relief is almost instant, and his leg goes back to feeling numb and foreign. Least weird thing going on right now, honestly.

Inside the bag is a thin gold ring.

Chapter 2: Prophets

Chapter Notes

CW for brief mention of current events - genocide, immigration enforcement and residential schools

The next time Shane wakes up, dazed, he sees his parents. They are watching him intently, their arms entwined, leaning forward with a synchronous look of concern and relief that he had known all his life, from the first time he ever put on skates, and soared across the ice, and fell, and got back up again. It makes him feel like that again, so small. Loved and protected.

“Hi guys,” he says, groggily.

“Hi kid,” says his dad. “You really scared us.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No, no,” his mom insists.

Their faces come into focus as he blinks away the sleep and the drugs. They’re old, he realizes. His mom’s hair is silvery grey. His dad’s face is creased with two decades’ worth of financial crises. They seem fragile.

“Did they tell you my memory’s fucked? Sorry.” He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t curse.”

“If ever there was a situation for cursing,” his dad says, teasing, but his eyes are sad.

“They told us, yes,” says his mom. She reaches out, holds her hand to the side of his face. “So the last thing you remember?”

“Montreal versus Boston. Home game. We were winning.”

“2010—You were eighteen.”

“Nineteen. I’m—I mean, I was, I guess. Nineteen.”

“Wow,” his mom breathes. “You really don’t remember anything after that?”

“Did we win?”

“Your first Montreal-Boston?” His mom thinks for a moment, eyes cast to the ceiling, tabulating stats. “Yes, you did. Three-two.”

“Good.”

His dad stands up from his chair, stretching his arms against the back of his head. It’s a stressed-out move Shane knows well. “You’ve won a lot of games since then.”

“Any cups?”

“Five, in total.”

“Whoa.” Shane feels like he’s a kid on a field trip to the planetarium. Everything is bizarre and impossible to understand, a jumble of science and wonderment at space-time. He’s not processing this like it happened to him, but like it will happen to him. Missives from the future; his parents, prophets.

“How about, Olympics?”

“Three,” his mom answers. “Silver in Russia, gold in Milan, bronze in France.”

“Only three?”

“There was a kerfuffle with the MLH and the IOC,” his dad explains.

Shane laughs drily. “A kerfuffle. Okay.”

“I have to say,” his mom interjects, “you’re taking this rather calmly, all things considered.”

“I am on drugs,” Shane muses.

“Even so.”

Shane watches them watch him, watches their worried glances at one another, the taut lines in their faces, the exhaustion. He wonders, fleetingly, why they hadn’t been here when he woke up, if it had been days since the accident. It’s only ninety minutes from Ottawa to Montreal.

“There’s a ring in a Ziploc bag,” Shane says, tilting his chin toward the bedside table. “It’s, um—Am I—” He can’t believe he’s about to ask this, that this bizarre combination of words is about to come out of his mouth. “Am I married to Ilya Rozanov?”

His mom offers a gentle half-smile. “You are.”

“And that’s—okay?”

At this, his mom crumbles, folds in on herself, like she’s no longer made of stone, but of cloth. His dad steps to her side, placing an arm on her back, steadying her as she wipes her face of tears with the heels of her hands.

“Shane. We love you. So, so much. There is nothing that could ever change that. Nothing.” She touches his face again, turns his head gently until his eyes meet hers. “Do you understand?”

Shane nods numbly. He feels tears brimming in the corners of his eyes.

“I should have told you when you were nineteen. I should have told you when you were nine.” She grabs his hand tightly. “It’s my biggest regret, that it took me so long.”

And maybe it’s the drugs, or the catharsis of being loved, or the absurdity of the situation, but there’s no lying to be done. No hiding, no restraint. “I’m scared, Mom,” he says, in a small voice.

“I know.” She squeezes his hand. “It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”

---------------

The next day, Ilya is back. Tucked under his arm is a composition notebook.

“What’s that?” Shane asks guardedly.

“Notebook. What, you’ve never seen notebook before?”

“Asshole. I mean, what’s it for?”

“Notes.”

Shane rolls his eyes, diverts his gaze to the bedside table, where the ring still sits unceremoniously in a crumpled plastic bag.

“Was my grandfather’s,” Ilya says gently, following Shane’s glance. “My mother’s father.”

(Ilya remembers taking the ring gingerly from a drawer of his mother’s things, in a forgotten corner of the attic of his father’s house, after the funeral. He remembers thinking, I will need this someday.)

Shane doesn’t say anything. Just shifts uncomfortably and watches as Ilya pulls the corner chair up next to the bed and sits down, gripping the notebook in his lap.

“You still haven’t told me what the notebook’s for.”

Ilya sighs in mock-exasperation. “It is my notes. It is all the things I need to tell you. You know, to fill you in.”

“Fill me in?”

“Ugh, is not double-entendre. You shut up.”

“Where did you learn ‘double-entendre’?”

Ilya ignores him. “Okay. I begin.” He opens the notebook to the first page. It is covered – covered – in looping handwriting, English, Cyrillic. There are arrows, highlighted passages, and a doodle of what appears to be a loon.

“We are going to start with Katy Perry.”

“Katy Perry, the singer?”

“Mm, no, she is astronaut now.”

“What?”

“Is okay. I’ll explain. Very strange Canadian situation. Do you remember who is Pierre Trudeau?”

---------------

The day after that, Ilya is back. And the next day, too.

Shane – this Shane, 2010 Shane – has only known Ilya Rozanov to be the enemy. Better than Shane, irritatingly; stronger; number one draft pick to his number two. They had laughed through that commercial shoot, laughed until their stomachs hurt and they couldn’t look each other in the eye. Then they had met in room 1410, and it had been terrifying, and wonderful, to know the shape of Ilya’s body besides his, to breathe his breath and taste the sweat on his skin. And that was it. They barely knew each other.

Yet here is Ilya, steadfast, every day with his composition notebook. On day two, he covers the last twenty Oscar-winning films, each with personal commentary. “Spotlight, didn’t see it. Moonlight, very good. We cried when we watched. The Shape of Water, stupid.”

On day three, Ilya hands him a crisp green $20 bill.

“What’s this for?”

“Look at it.” Ilya reaches across Shane and takes the untouched pudding cup from his lunch tray.

Shane inspects the bill, at first not understanding. Then he realizes: “That’s not Queen Elizabeth.”

“Mm, no.” Ilya consults his notebook. “She died in 2022.”

Shane tries to hand the bill back, but Ilya pushes it away. “You keep it,” he says, mouth full. “Use it to bribe the nurses to give you better pudding. This stuff is shit.”

On day four, Ilya covers what he calls, “the pain in the world.” Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Congo, Yemen. A regime south of the border; kidnappings in Minneapolis. Unmarked graves in Saskatchewan. “It is hard,” Ilya says, “but it is important to remember these things. So I tell you.”

On day five, they cover hockey.

Ilya tells Shane about their careers. Two intertwined paths.

Leaving Boston for Ottawa, for Shane. Leaving Montreal, with a heavy heart.

Three cups with Montreal. Two cups, remarkably, with Ottawa – a team that, to all of Shane’s current knowledge, frankly, sucked.

“So I play for Ottawa now,” Shane repeats.

“Yes.”

“And you do, too?”

“I’m retired, a few years now. But I did, up until then.” He smiles. “Many years, we played together.”

“Why’d you retire?”

Ilya shrugs. “It was time. I was ready.”

“You really left Boston for me?”

“Yes.”

“And went to Ottawa.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“For you, stupid. We’ve been over this.”

“No, I mean—” Shane shakes his head. “Why, me?”

“Ah.” Ilya closes the notebook gently. “That is a much longer story. We will get there, in our lessons. I have several pages about it.”

“The short version?”

“Mm. Against our very best intentions, we fell in love.”

Shane shifts against the pillow and looks down at his hands. He picks the edge of his thumb with his index finger, restless.

Ilya reads his discomfort, clears his throat and announces, “Scott Hunter is gay.”

From Shane, a small, surprised gasp. “No way.”

“Yes way. He does big kiss with very handsome, very sexy boyfriend after Admirals win the cup. This is—” Ilya consults his notebook, “—2017.”

Shane scoffs. “The Admirals winning the cup is harder to believe than Scott Hunter being gay.”

Ilya’s eyes light up with a smile. “He wrote a memoir, Hunter did. Guess the title.”

“Um.” Shane can’t think of anything. “The Scott Hunter Story.”

“Boring. This is boring answer, Hollander.”

“Shut up.”

“Are you ready?” He’s giddy. “Out of the Closet and Into the Crease.”

“Oh my god, that’s awful.”

“I know.”

“That doesn’t even make sense. He’s not a goalie.”

“He’s retired. Now you are the old man player in MLH.”

“Ugh, don’t say that.” Shane cringes. He still hasn’t processed the time-travel of it all. He feels normal; he feels nineteen. “Hey, um, can I ask you a favour?”

“Anything. Yes.”

Shane looks away, looks again at his hands. They’re familiar; they’re the same as he remembers. Maybe a little more rugged, bruised from the fall. “Could you bring me a mirror, next time?”

“A mirror.”

Shane breathes out, embarrassed. “It’s stupid.”

“No, it’s not.” Ilya closes the notebook and sets it down on the table, next to the ring, still in its bag. “You are a very handsome old man, you know.” He’s teasing, but his voice is soft and kind.

“Do I have grey hair?”

Ilya bites his lip, nods a small nod. “Some.” He smiles. “It’s—how do you call it. Salt and pepper.”

“Ew. Really?”

“It’s sexy,” Ilya says earnestly. When that doesn’t make Shane laugh, he adds, “It’s very dignified.”

Shane presses his hands into his eyes. “You don’t understand.” His voice trails off, pitching upward. If it weren’t for the morphine, the warm greyscale feeling which wraps around the harsh edges of his brain like bubble wrap, he would be in a full anxiety attack right now, he’s sure of it.

Ilya shifts forward in his seat, tilting his head, inquisitive and sad. “Can you explain it to me?”

“I blinked, Rozanov. Sorry—Ilya.” Shane shakes his head, still not meeting Ilya’s eyes. “I blinked and then I was down. And I woke up and I’m forty years old, I guess, but last week – last week – I was nineteen. Like, that’s indisputable. There’s not like, blank space where memories should be. There’s just—nothing. There’s 2010, and then there’s now.”

Shane looks up now, but Ilya looks away. There’s a tear snaking down the man’s watercolour cheek. Ilya wipes it away, sniffling.

Shane continues. “I get that there was a stroke and surgery and a coma and all that. I get it. Like, I know what’s real and what isn’t.” He feels his own tears now, stinging his eyes. “I had a whole life, and I can’t remember any of it, Ilya, I can’t, and now my hair is fucking salt and pepper and we’re fucking married and maybe we were even happy.” His voice cracks as it reaches a crescendo. He catches his breath, exhales a thought he didn’t even know he has been holding onto, ever since his first girlfriend in high school. Ever since room 1410. “I never—I never imagined I would be happy.”

Shane glances again at the ring. He has not touched it since the nurse set it there in its bag, days ago. Just looks at it periodically, as if it might suddenly come to life and start talking to him, explaining its existence in simple terms. One could hope.

“I’m sorry I’m not him,” Shane says, looking away.

“Who?”

“Future me. Whoever you fell in love with.” What’s unsaid hangs in the air: whoever fell in love with you. Because this Shane – 2010 Shane – doesn’t love him. Is amused by their daily lessons, comforted by his presence, even grateful. But love?

“That’s the thing, Shane,” Ilya says. His eyes are shining. “You are, right now, exactly who I fell in love with.”

Chapter 3: Clarity

On day six, Shane’s parents are back. There’s no Ilya, and Shane realizes, to his dismay, that he has been looking forward to their lessons. To seeing him each morning.

Weirdly, his dad is carrying the composition notebook today. He sits down while his mom fiddles with a vase of flowers on the table at the end of the room. Flowers have been arriving all week, and gift baskets and greeting cards and one large teddy bear. A nurse read some of the cards to him, but he didn’t recognize the names of who sent them.

“Is that Ilya’s?” Shane asks his dad.

“Yeah. He didn’t want you to miss a day. He said today we’re supposed to go over, um, let’s see.” He flips to a dog-eared page. “Today is the #MeToo movement, ChatGPT, TikTok, and, uh, lab-grown meat.”

“Lab-grown meat?” Shane echoes.

“He thought you’d be interested to know that they can grow meat now just from the DNA of animals, without killing the animal. Like in a petri dish, or something.”

Shane cringes. “Gross.”

“Yeah,” his dad agrees. “Pretty gross.”

“Where is he?” Shane tries to keep his voice casual. Not too eager.

His mom answers from across the room, “He had to pop home. He’ll be back day after tomorrow.”

Home. Right. Their shared home in Ottawa. Still weird.

“I brought some study materials, too,” his mom says. She lifts a tote bag from her shoulder and passes it to his dad, who pulls out a thick binder, scraps of paper peeking out from every which side.

“What’s that?”

“That,” says his mom, reverently, “is the Book of Shane.” She nods at his dad, who passes the binder over the side of the bed.

Shane takes it carefully. Its three-inch spine is buckling, its plastic edges curling with age. The cover insert is a plain sheet of paper with typed Times New Roman: Shane News Clippings. Of course his mom would have kept something like this.

“Wait,” his dad interrupts. “Yuna, his glasses?”

“Right, right, Ilya said he left them—” She spins around and scans the room. “—There.” She strides to the other side of the bed and picks up a small brown case.

Shane looks at the case as if she’s handing him a loose baked potato. “I don’t wear glasses,” he says, confused.

“Just for reading,” his dad encourages. “You’re a touch farsighted.”

“2013, I think, is when you got your prescription,” his mom adds. “You were getting headaches.”

“Oh.” Shane takes the plastic case and opens it, inspecting the glasses like he’s never seen a pair of glasses before in his life. He puts them on, and the binder in his lap snaps into focus. “They, uh. Well, they work.”

(What a stupid thing to say. Of course they work. They’re his glasses. Even if he’s never seen them, used them, or heard of them.)

(He wants to scream.)

Shane opens the binder, and is surprised to find that the first clipping isn’t about hockey at all. It’s from when he was little. Grade two. Ottawa, Ont. Classroom Receives Unusual Class Pet.

“Hah, I remember this.” Gary the owl. Some sort of endangered, rescued creature who had, briefly, attended French immersion. “I can’t believe you kept this.”

“I kept everything.” She gestures with a rolling motion of her hand. “Skip to the pink sticky note. That’s where you left off. 2010.”

He flips past pages of yellowing cut-outs. There’s a photo of his Timbits team, clad in green, holding up their plastic gold medals. Stats from youth league, handwritten in his mother’s slanted cursive on the back of a practice schedule. The press release of the Canadian juniors roster. An article from the Citizen: Shane Hollander, 17, Represents Ottawa on World Hockey Stage. Regina – Shane remembers. Cigarette smoke curling through the frigid air.

He arrives at the pink Post-It. Newspaper clippings have become internet print-outs. Hockey blogs, Facebook posts, ESPN.com. Ads torn from magazines, pages still glossy, Shane posing with Rolex watches and Reebok sneakers. A headline from the CBC: Canadian Phenom Hollander Named MLH’s Rookie of the Year. He’s reading about himself the way he would read a biography of Winston Churchill. These are the facts of a life, yes, but not one that he has lived.

Through it all winds a thread that, at first, Shane doesn’t catch. It weaves through his life’s story unfolding in front of him, and he slowly realizes that his own name never appears more than a sentence apart from Rozanov’s, anywhere. Every article, interview, blog post – Hollander versus Rozanov, the rivals, two of the greatest to ever play the game. 

His parents are quiet while he reads, except for his mom’s occasional commentary. “That was a really good season. You led the league in scoring.”

Shane’s brow furrows when he gets to late 2016. “Huh.” He’s inspecting a printout from TMZ. “I dated Rose Landry?”

“Ah, you did,” his mom confirms.

“The Rose Landry.”

“We love Rose,” his dad pipes in.

“She came to your wedding,” his mom adds.

“She’s directing something in Iceland right now, but she wants to come visit and see how you’re doing,” says his dad. “She’s been texting us all week. She’s so worried.”

“I’m friends with Rose Landry, who is also my ex, and she texts with my parents?”

“What?” His mom shrugs nonchalantly, delighted at his teenage embarrassment. “We have a group chat.”

---------------

Between everything, there are doctors. Scans. Physio. Counselling, with J.P. “Jean-Paul, but only my mother calls me that,” the man said at their first session. He was short, with round glasses, and balding reddish hair.

“Okay,” Shane said hesitantly.

“How are we feeling today?”

“Um. Like, physically?”

“Sure, any way you want to answer. Physically, emotionally, spiritually.”

“Well, the pain is getting better.”

“Good to hear.”

Shane cleared his throat. “Look, um, am I supposed to be doing anything in particular?”

“How do you mean?”

“Like, to get my memory back. Is there something I should be doing?”

J.P. shook his head with a small, quiet smile. “You’re already doing it. Being here, being with your loved ones. Have patience with yourself. Are you getting a good night’s sleep?”

At that point, Shane realized, with great confidence, that counselling with J.P. was going to be useless.

---------------

It isn’t until the eleventh day that he makes sense of something that has been nagging at him, snippets of glimpses of whispers of something that didn’t make sense until, suddenly, it does. A blurry glance at the lock screen on Ilya’s phone. A constant back-and-forth to Ottawa, his parents and Ilya playing Batman and Bruce Wayne – you never see them in the same room at the same time. Ilya’s cryptically explained retirement from the sport he was, literally, the greatest at in the world. And finally, his dad’s coffee tumbler, left behind on the table at the edge of the room, nestled between flowers and gift baskets, tilted so that Shane almost couldn’t read it. Almost.

World’s Best Grandpa

And when it clicks into place with terrifying clarity, Shane doesn’t know what to do. His breathing quickens, his chest tightens. There’s no morphine today to cushion this feeling, like a hypnogogic freefall. Every sense is screaming. He covers his ears and closes his eyes, and that’s how Ilya finds him on the eleventh day.

He hurries to Shane’s side. “Hey, hey.”

Shane groans. “I’ll be okay. Just need a minute,” he insists through shaky breaths.

Ilya stiffens, stopping himself from reaching out to hold him, to touch him. Shane doesn’t remember, doesn’t know, to trust Ilya’s touch. So he just sits there beside the bed, helplessly watching, until Shane’s breathing slows, chest rising, falling, rising, falling.

Shane opens his eyes and finds Ilya’s, dark and worried. “Sorry,” he manages to say.

“Don’t ever be sorry, okay?” Ilya nods in a way that he hopes is reassuring. “What happened?”

“I, um—” Shane looks away, turns his head against the pillow. Ilya follow’s his gaze to David’s forgotten coffee cup. Oh. His heart falls.

“We were going to wait to tell you,” Ilya explains quietly. “Your parents and I, we thought, maybe it’s better to wait.”

“Ilya.” Shane’s voice is hesitant, quavering. He turns his head back, but avoids Ilya’s gaze. “Do we—do we have a kid?”

Silence, for a beat. “We do.” And there’s a smile on Ilya’s face that is small and warm and sad and radiantly happy all at the same time. “We have two.”

Shane shuts his eyes again, shakes his head against the pillow. “I don’t know what to do with this information.” He feels the panic tightening around him again, grasping his throat, pummeling his lungs.

“Shh,” Ilya urges. He breaks his own rule and reaches forward, resting a hand on Shane’s forearm. Tries not to let his heart sink when Shane flinches at his touch. He removes his hand. “Breathe. It’s okay.”

Slowly, Shane feels his body calm. He opens his eyes but doesn’t say anything.

This is crazy. This is huge. There are two human children out there in the world who believe Shane Hollander is their father. A concept so intensely frightening, he’s not sure he can process it. He might actually be short-circuiting. Does not compute.

For a long time, they are silent with the weight of it.

Then Shane turns toward him, and Ilya realizes that Shane has been crying.

He wants to wipe the tears from Shane’s face, to trace his thumb along the galaxy of freckles. He doesn’t.

“Am I a good dad?” Shane asks softly.

“Yes.” Ilya grabs Shane’s hand in both of his. Shane doesn’t flinch this time. Tears sting Ilya’s eyes. “Yes, yes,” he whispers. “You are a very good dad.”

Chapter 4: Complete

Niko is eight and Lidiya is five. Niko likes giraffes, pirates, and something called Minecraft. Lidiya likes chocolate chip pancakes, outer space, and Taylor Swift.

“Taylor Swift is still popular?”

“Taylor Swift is still very, very popular.”

“Do they skate?”

“Mm-hm, yeah. They play in Timbits league. I coach.”

“You coach Timbits hockey?”

“I am very good coach. We win last season.”

“I mean, of course they would win. Our kids would be basically, like, hockey royalty, right?”

“Basically, right.” Ilya considers. “Niko actually is not very good at hockey.”

“No?”

“Gets distracted very easily. More interested in going fast than scoring goals.”

“Huh.”

“He is very fast. Very good balance. I think we should try him in speed skating.”

“Speed skating?”

“Is an Olympic sport.”

“I know what speed skating is.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Asshole. You know what I meant.”

“Here, I show you video—” Ilya scrolls on his phone, holds it out to Shane.

Shane takes the phone and watches a small red-and-yellow uniform dash across the screen. “That one’s him?”

“Yeah. Fast, see?”

“Yeah.” Shane’s heart seizes in his chest. This is real. That’s a real kid, his real kid. Holy shit.

Ilya notices Shane tense up, his breathing hasten. “Hey. It’s okay. We don’t have to—”

“No, I want to. I’m just, like, freaked out.”

“I understand.”

“Can I, um—Could you show me some pictures?”

Ilya softens at this request. He blinks away tears because here is this man he has raised children with, who can’t even remember what they look like. “Of course.” He takes the phone back from Shane, opens the photos app and finds the album that he made once for Yuna and David. It’s called, Our Family.

“Here.”

Tentatively, Shane takes the phone from Ilya’s hand, their fingers brushing. He taps on the first image, top left.

“Oh,” he gasps quietly. They’re wearing Centaurs jerseys; they’re at a game. Backs to the ice, facing the camera with ear-to-ear grins. The boy on the left must be Niko. He has a mop of dark curls, a spray of freckles across his cheeks. Then the girl – Lidiya – she’s small. So small. Her hair is dark and straight, her eyes closed with rapturous laughter. They look so happy. And beautiful and perfect and so, so familiar. “They look like—”

“You.”

“Yeah,” Shane exhales. “How?”

“You have strong genes, Shane.” Ilya is trying hard not to let the pain into his voice. “Your children are so like you.”

They sit in silence while Shane scrolls to the next picture, then the next. Halloween costumes. Christmas under a glowing tree. He’s a character in these photos, but he doesn’t recognize the scenes. Barely recognizes himself.

“Why me? Why not you?”

“Mm.” Ilya tilts his head. “Bad family medical history. Yours is better. Did you know your great-grandmother is still alive?”

“Hii-obāchan? She must be like, a hundred.”

“A hundred and four.”

More quiet. Shane gazes at a photo of the four of them, on the shore of a lake crested by fir trees. The sun sets behind them, fiery orange glinting off the water. Niko brandishes a marshmallow on a stick. Lidiya is aloft in Shane’s arms, clinging to his neck, and he’s looking at her, completely entranced. And Ilya stands at his side, arm around his waist, one hand resting on Niko’s shoulder, smiling wide. The only one looking at the camera.

“Are they, ah—” Shane searches for the words. He thinks of all his lonely afternoons growing up, kids who didn’t understand him, who couldn’t see how hard he was trying to fit in, how much work it took. How it exhausted him. These worst parts of himself, surely, were heritable. “Do they have friends?”

“They do, yes.” Ilya nods, a pressed smile on his lips. “They have a lot of friends.”

“Good.” Shane leans against the pillow, releasing a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Good. That’s good.”

---------------

Ilya insists that Shane meet with J.P. that afternoon.

“He’s not going to help anything,” Shane rebuts. “And besides, I’m not freaking out anymore.”

“That’s because your brain is saving up for an even bigger freak-out later,” Ilya counters. “Just meet with him! Is no big deal.”

“Fine,” Shane grumbles. “Will you come back tomorrow?”

“Mm, no. I go to Ottawa now, your parents come tomorrow.”

“You’ve been switching to watch them,” Shane states. The kids; our kids. He still can’t say it out loud.

“That’s right.”

Shane drums his fingers on the bed. There’s an anxious energy pulsing through him. His centre of gravity has shifted; there are two people in the world who are the absolutely most important. “Can you bring them next time?”

Ilya hesitates. “You can’t panic, Shane.”

“I won’t panic.”

“They are stressful beings, okay? Energetic. Very loud. Always sticky.”

“Why are they sticky?”

“They eat many jams and jellies.”

“Look. I won’t panic. I want—I want to meet them. So much.”

Ilya sighs. “Alright.”

“Alright?”

“They miss you. I bring them on the weekend.”

For the first time, Shane reaches out and takes Ilya’s hand. Ilya’s breath hitches. “Thank you,” Shane says, meeting his eyes.

“You can’t panic.” Ilya squeezes Shane’s hand. “I mean it, Shane. They are already scared for you being in the hospital. If you panic, it will frighten them.”

“I won’t panic.”

“Good.” Ilya stands slowly, still holding Shane’s hand. “Meet with your fucking therapist, Shane. I have to go. Yuna and David have many pictures. They can show you tomorrow.” He unclasps his hand and brushes it through Shane’s hair and along the side of his face. Shane doesn’t lean into his touch, but he doesn’t turn away.

---------------

“Why didn’t they tell me sooner? Ilya, or my parents?”

J.P. raises an eyebrow. “Why do you think that is?”

“Because they thought I’d freak out.”

“But haven’t you been freaking out this whole time? Isn’t every bit of news shocking to you, in your condition?”

Shane shrugs. “I guess.”

“So why do you think they withheld this particular piece of information?” J.P. adjusts his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

Shane looks up at the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he sighs. “I guess they thought, like, I’d feel responsible.”

“Responsible how?”

Shane thinks for a moment. “Responsible, like, obligated.”

“And do you? Feel obligated?”

“I mean, kind of.” Shane half-laughs uncomfortably. “It’s a huge responsibility.”

“What is, exactly?”

“Having—you know. Having kids. Being a parent, I guess.”

J.P. doesn’t say anything, and Shane hates the silence, J.P. peering at him from behind wire frames like he’s being studied. So he keeps talking. “How am I supposed to know how to do this?”

“Do what?”

“Be their father.” He didn’t mean for it to come out so combatively. The weight of the words frightens him.

“Maybe you’re not supposed to know. Maybe you’re supposed to learn.”

“But they deserve, like, so much more than that.”

“What do they deserve?”

The father they grew up with. Someone who remembers them. Who knows their birthdays, their middle names.

“They deserve everything.”

“So,” J.P. says, shifting forward in his chair. “Give them everything you can.”

Shane swallows. “What if it’s not enough?”

“And what if it is?”

---------------

“What are they like?” he asks his parents.

“Rambunctious,” says his dad.

His mom rolls her eyes. “They’re perfection, Shane,” she says. “You have phenomenal children.”

“Niko is perseverant,” his dad shares. “When he sets his mind to something, he can’t be stopped. Just like you.”

“And Lidiya is like you, too, of course,” says his mom. “So thoughtful. She has this curiosity about the world. She loves to learn.”

Shane nods, thinking. “Are they like him, too?”

“Oh, yes,” his mom laughs. “They’re loud. They’re funny.”

“Resilient,” his dad adds. “Focused. Hardworking.”

“Loving,” his mom concludes, with a soft smile.

Shane nods again. His eyes dart to his hands. “I’m kind of terrified.”

They’re silent for a moment. It’s his dad, finally, who clears his throat and settles a hand on Shane’s shoulder. “So be terrified. And love them anyway.”

---------------

He panics.

It’s day fourteen and he hears laughter outside like music, high pitched voices growing louder and closer.

He tries to swallow the feeling, to let it sink to his toes. He straightens himself up where he sits, exhales slow, steady breaths, closes his eyes.

Then the door swings open and Ilya stands there, tall and soft, lit by the bright hallway light, a little girl in his arms. There’s a blur of bouncing curls that races past his legs and up to Shane’s bedside.

“Dad!” Niko exclaims, gripping his fingers on the metal railing. “Papa says your memory is really bad.”

And this is it. There’s no turning back. No panicking. Nothing to say but, “That’s right.”

“Do you remember me?”

Shane shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Not really.”

“What about Lidiya?”

He shakes his head again.

The boy considers for a moment; Shane watches the thoughts form on his face, a pursed lip, a dimpled chin. God, it’s like a mirror.

His heart beats, but it’s not panic. It’s something else.

“It’s okay,” Niko says, shrugging. “We’ll just remind you about stuff. Do you want to play Switch?” And with that, Niko scales the railing and climbs into the bed next to Shane, finding purchase against the side of his chest.

“Kolya, be gentle,” Ilya admonishes. He’s sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed, Lidiya in his lap. Her eyes are wide in a way Shane recognizes. She’s nervous.

Lidiya says something in a quiet voice, and Shane doesn’t understand. It’s Russian, he realizes.

Niko retorts back in loud Russian, and Lidiya objects. “Papa?” she complains.

“English, today, my loves.” Ilya looks to Shane. “She wants to sit in the bed, too. Is it okay?”

Shane nods wordlessly, and Ilya lifts their daughter over the railing. She settles herself at Shane’s side opposite her brother, and rests her head on his shoulder.

Niko is holding some sort of video game, reaching across to show his sister. “Do you remember how to play?” He looks up at Shane expectantly, and his face changes to one of concern, brows furrowed, frowning. “Dad, how come you’re crying?”

Lidiya reaches up and touches his tear-stained face with a small hand. This just makes him cry even more, and laugh, as he holds his children in his arms, their weight, their warmth, brilliant and real and alive. “It’s good. I’m okay,” he assures. “It’s happy crying.”

But now Lidiya has thrown her arms around his neck, and she’s crying too, and so is Niko, and soon enough so is Ilya, who reaches out a gentle hand to brush the tears from his daughter’s face and tuck her hair behind her ears. It’s a big, beautiful mess and Shane can’t catch his breath enough to explain that he didn’t mean to cry, he didn’t mean to cause this, to frighten them. That it’s not panic, it’s a love so overwhelming and vast and joyous that his body can’t handle it.

Ilya laughs through his tears. “We’ve missed you. In case you can’t tell.”

Shane chokes out a laugh, then a sob. He presses his face into the soft curls of his son’s head. This steadies him enough to take a breath. He may not remember them, but how was he ever complete, before this?

“I’ve missed you, too.”

Chapter 5: Soup

Shane Hollander wasn’t born good at hockey. He fucking worked for it.

Everything he knew, he learned. Studied. Practiced, relentlessly. He watched tape, took notes, even as a kid. He wasn’t a prodigy; he just loved it, and wanted, more than anything, to be good at it. To be the best. And so he worked at it, and so he was.

And so, he thinks, he can learn how to do this, too. This – be a father, remember things, live a life informed by the twenty years he’s forgotten. He can win at physical therapy, at counselling, at memorizing the timelines in Ilya’s notebook. He can work hard, and he can win.

“Physical therapy isn’t something you can win at,” Dr. Aguilar tells him after he relays his plans. She rolls her eyes a little. “But I appreciate that you’re committed to success here.” She’s holding his leg in its cast, rotating his thigh, gently.

“Well, success must mean something, right? Like, there’s an end point. And I can get there.”

“You can, yes.”

He switches to French. He wants to use his brain more, to challenge himself. “So what’s next? How do I get better, sooner?”

“Sooner, we can’t help, my friend.” She moves around the end of the bed and lifts his other leg. “Neither you nor I can change how fast a bone heals.”

“But I can do other things in the meantime, right?”

She sighs, continues rocking his leg. He appreciates the stretching sensation; he hates being stuck in bed. “Before I go, I will give you some grip exercises you can do on your own. How’s that?”

“Great. I’ll do them,” he says quickly.

“You’re a very interesting patient, Mr. Hollander,” Dr. Aguilar observes. She switches back to English, chuckling. “Don’t worry. We’ll win you the Stanley Cup of physical therapy.”

---------------

“Okay,” Ilya says as he sits down in his chair. He has the notebook with him, and also a manila folder, filled with papers. “Today we learn about falling in love.”

Shane doesn’t look at him, feeling awkward, but also brave. “Finally. I’ve been wondering.”

“I know.” Ilya opens the manila folder and pulls out a thick stapled packet. It’s at least a dozen pages. “Put on your glasses. There is reading today.”

Shane reaches for the glasses case on the bedside table. “What’s that?” he asks, nodding at the paper in Ilya’s hand.

“Detailed timeline of our sexual and romantic relationship.” He passes it to Shane, who takes it curiously.

“This looks like a legal document.”

“It is.” Ilya half-smiles, like he’s trying to hide being sad. “This is a sworn affidavit from when the MLH sued us for fraud.”

“Sorry, what?”

Ilya grins. “I told you it’s a long story.”

He gives Shane a moment to thumb through the packet. It starts with meeting in Regina (“no sexual contact initiated”); then Toronto (“initial sexual encounter”). The language is clinical, but the arc it paints is something else.

Shane’s eyebrows perform a choregraphed dance as he reads. By page six, he looks up at Ilya, flabbergasted. He’s too stunned to even feel embarrassed. “Ilya. We had so much sex.”

“I know.”

“Like, so much.”

“Yes, I know, I was there.”

Shane exhales a small laugh. “Well so was I, apparently.” He flips to the next page. “When—Sorry, this is so weird to read like this. It’s like a textbook.”

“Mm. Wait till you get to the evidentiary exhibits.” When Shane looks at him like he just spoke Russian, Ilya clarifies: “Screenshots of our dirty texts.”

“Our sexts got used in a court case? Like, a judge and a lawyer had to read our sexts?”

“Many lawyers,” Ilya corrects.

“That’s—mortifying.”

“Mm-hmm.” Ilya nods, jaw set.

A beat of silence passes as the gravity of it all sinks in; and Shane thinks he understands why Ilya took so long to tell him about this, in their lessons. It seems, maybe, painful.

“Okay,” Ilya says loudly, clapping his hands together as he stands. “I’m going to let you study. I go get coffee, come back, then we talk, yes?”

“Okay,” Shane responds, hesitant. “I should just, keep reading?”

“Keep reading.”

And Shane does. There’s a litany of hotel rooms, texts exchanged, each correlated with gameday stats. Goals, shots on goal, assists. Shane feels a little hum of pride as he counts hat trick after hat trick under his name; and then he realizes.

“They thought we were throwing games,” Shane tells Ilya as he steps into the room.

There’s no lid on his foam coffee cup; steam snakes through the air. He takes a sip, cringing at the heat, and sits down carefully. “Among other things, yes. That was a concern.”

“We didn’t though. Right?” Because Shane knows he would never throw a game. He would never let someone else win if he could help it, never, not even if it was someone he maybe had fallen in love with.

But, he can’t remember; and really, he doesn’t know a thing about himself after 2010. A clawing feeling of doubt churns in his throat.

“No, Shane. You would gouge your eyes out with ice cream scoop before you would let me win.”

“Good. I thought so.”

Ilya smiles with just the corner of his mouth, thinking. “So. Can you tell yet, when it happened?”

“When what happened?”

“The falling in love.”

“Oh.” Shane flips back through the pages. There was something odd about one of the Boston dates. 2016. It had been followed by months without contact. On paper, it looks like a breakup; and, Shane recalls his mom’s binder – TMZ: Rose Landry’s Hunky Hockey Hookup.

“It must have been after I, uh, dated Rose Landry. So—Tampa? We like, broke up and got back together?” He points at the entry for the All-Star game.

“You are good detective,” Ilya praises. “But not quite.”

“Okay, so, when was it?”

Ilya tilts his head, smiling softly, remembering. “I think, a little bit, the whole time, for both of us. But.” He leans over the bedside and points at the entry before Tampa; at Boston. “Here is where things changed, mostly.”

“Then why did I date Rose Landry after that?”

“Because things suddenly felt serious and you freaked the fuck out.”

“That, ah—” Shane blinks, shakes his head. “That sounds like me.”

“Yeah,” Ilya laughs.

“Sorry about that?” Shane offers.

“You are forgiven.” He’s teasing, but his eyes are soft at the corners. And then, Ilya starts to tell the story, for real. No legalese, no dates and timestamps.

Just, memories.

---------------

Ilya is a good storyteller. His voice is warm and low. Shane closes his eyes as he listens. He tries to borrow Ilya’s memories, to plant them in his brain, to conjure images from them, at least, if not feelings. But everything is just out of his grasp.

By the summer at the cottage, they’re both crying, a little.

“It was one of the best days of my life, when you said you love me,” Ilya confesses. “One of the five best days. You love me, you marry me, Niko is born, Lidiya is born.”

“What was the fifth? Your first cup?”

“Ah, no,” Ilya says, a touch of warm surprise in his voice, as if he’s just realizing it himself. He smiles. “Was a cold day in Saskatchewan.”

---------------

As it turns out, they maybe, possibly, had committed fraud after all.

The case ended up being dropped, so they’ll never know if they would have won or lost. “We had a very good lawyer,” Ilya assures. “We would have won.”

Shane wonders if the lawsuit had been in the news; he hasn’t gotten to 2021 in his mom’s binder yet.

Fraud, Shane learns, has a very broad definition. It can be any intentional deception, misrepresentation, or concealment that results in personal gain or damages to others. The crux of the lawsuit wasn’t the question of thrown games after all (though that was a part of it). Mainly, the MLH claimed that Ilya’s  move to the Centaurs had yielded financial damages to the league by dampening the Rozanov-Hollander rivalry, which apparently, when accounting for sponsorships, ad revenue, broadcast, licensing, ticket sales, concessions, merchandise, and digital content, was not merely a historic rivalry between two of the world’s greatest hockey stars.

It was, in fact, a rivalry valued at approximately $286 million U.S. dollars. Per season.

“Jesus.”

“I know!” Ilya exclaims. “Never before did they tell us we are worth this. They make this money off of us for years. Then, they sue us.” He mutters something in Russian, clearly a curse.

“But you said you were a free agent, right? You were allowed to change teams for, like, any reason. You could have left Boston because you hate clam chowder.”

“The problem wasn’t that I left Boston. It was that I misrepresented the reason for leaving Boston.”

Ilya hasn’t said so, but Shane thinks, it must have been hard for him to leave Boston. It must have been fucking devastating. The team that drafted him, first pick, his home for a decade – and then, Ottawa? All for him.

Something stirs in Shane’s chest. Gratitude, maybe. Or something.

“Hey, um,” Shane begins. He pauses, considering. “You told me that I left Montreal for Ottawa because they weren’t—accepting. Of us.”

Absently, Ilya reaches for Shane’s hand, passes a thumb softly across his wrist. “That’s right.”

“How bad was it, exactly?” He braces himself. The Metros of his memory, of only three weeks ago as it feels to him, had been his lifeline. Even as a rookie, he would ride or die for them. He thought they would do the same.

“It was bad, Shane.” He squeezes Shane’s hand. “They questioned everything. Every game you ever played. They stopped trusting you.”

Shane nods along, tension tugging on his cheekbones as he clenches his jaw. “That—really sucks.”

“It did. It does.”

“We won three cups together,” Shane recites, remembering lesson number five.

(Cups he’s never held, won on goals he’s never scored. He can’t remember, he can’t, and it’s killing him.)

“You’re still friends with some of them,” Ilya comforts. “J.J. is retired now. He has a big house on the beach in Portugal. And your Hayden Pike – he is bigshot CBC commentator. He has a million children and they are all teenagers. He wants to visit, when you’re ready.”

“That’s nice, I guess.” Ilya has told Shane that Hayden is his closest and dearest friend, but in 2010, they were just teammates who got along okay.

They fall into a heavy silence. Ilya’s hand is still draped over Shane’s.

Shane thinks, now, about his children. Their laughter, their curiosity. Their wholeness.

He thinks about a ring in a Ziploc bag.

“It was worth it,” Shane concludes. “Wasn’t it?”

(Later, after Ilya leaves for Ottawa, he’ll take the ring out of its bag for the first time. He’ll hold it in his palm; he won’t wear it, but he’ll wonder what it would feel like on his finger.)

“It was,” Ilya agrees solemnly. “And, I do.”

“You do what?”

“Hate clam chowder,” he says, standing up. “Soup should not be so clumpy like this. Is not proper.”

Shane laughs. He can’t help it. It’s a laugh that rises from his stomach and stings his cheeks and he can hardly catch his breath.

(Ilya loves this laugh.)

“When you are out of hospital, I make you borscht,” Ilya says over Shane’s laughter. “This is good, proper soup. You will love it.”

And for the first time, Shane can picture it – like, he can see it. Going home, going to their home, together. Sitting at a dinner table, four of them, a family, laughing until their faces hurt. Eating borscht.

Chapter 6: Strawberries

MONTREAL

NOVEMBER 2031

The kids come visit every weekend now, and Shane’s entire rehabilitation depends on it. Mondays are devastating, their absence. He knows they have school; he’s glad they have routine, and normalcy. But god does he miss them.

Tuesdays are alright. He’s sharper, focused. He’s out of bed twice a day for physio by now, tottering down a short hallway on crutches. Three weeks bedridden has messed with him in ways he didn’t anticipate. His balance is off. He’s taller than he remembers being, in 2010.

On some Tuesdays, Dr. Ismail observes. She huddles with Dr. Aguilar at the end of the hall while a PT with a pierced eyebrow, Marc-Antoine, supports Shane’s side. Marc-Antoine is cool. They humour Shane’s insistence on speaking in French, and they explain Minecraft to him, so he can talk about it later with Niko.

By Wednesdays, he’s in a better mood. Wednesday means just two more days and then they’re back, and his room is filled with noise and laughter again. On Wednesdays, he sees J.P.

“How are you feeling?” Always this opening line. Shane rolls his eyes.

“Fine, I guess.”

“You can do better than that.”

“Antsy,” Shane says. “Bored. I just want to go home.” And as he says it, he realizes he doesn’t know where home even is. Ottawa, he knows; but what street? What neighbourhood? When he thinks of home, he still thinks of an apartment in the Plateau.

“You’re impatient,” J.P. observes.

“I just want to be better. I’m stuck here learning how to walk. It’s infuriating and like, I don’t know. Humiliating."

“You’re very focused on your physical recovery.”

“Well, yeah. They’ll discharge me when I can take care of myself.”

“What about your memory?”

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be helping me with?”

J.P. shakes his head, and his glasses slip a little down his nose. He pushed them back up with the back of his pen. “I’m here to help you manage your emotions related to your memory loss. I can’t help you regain your memories.”

Shane crosses his arms, looks away, at the wall. Ilya has taped up some photos of the kids. There’s Niko, a smaller version of him in a tiny graduation cap and gown, proudly displaying his kindergarten diploma. There’s Lidiya in her Timbits uniform, absolutely swallowed by her helmet, wearing a plastic medal around her neck. Shane took that picture, according to Ilya. He doesn’t remember.

“Shane, I’ve consulted with doctors Thibault and Tremblay,” J.P. interrupts. “It seems you’re something of a medical marvel.”

Shane looks down at his hands. “Why’s that?”

“According to Dr. Thibault, the physical structures of your brain have healed very well. Based on the type of neurological trauma you experienced, you shouldn’t be experiencing such a prolonged episode of amnesia.”

“Okay, but, I am,” Shane snaps. “Sorry. It’s just—that is like. Meaningless to me. I still can’t remember anything.”

“I know.”

“Actually. There’s something—” Shane halts, looks up at J.P. “There’s something odd. Not a memory. Just, something.”

“What’s that?”

“Strawberries.”

“What about strawberries?”

“They feel—important.” Shane rolls his eyes, at himself.

“Have you told Ilya about this?”

“About the importance of strawberries? No,” Shane laughs uncomfortably. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I don’t want to, like. Be hopeful about it.”

“It’s okay to feel hope, Shane.”

“No, it’s not.” Shane brings his hand to his forehead, presses hard with his thumb between his eyebrows. “You want to know why I’m so focused on my physical recovery? Because there’s a timeline. There’s a plan. Sixteen weeks for the bone to heal. I can win that.”

“Win?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t – but we’ll save that for next session. We’re at time.”  J.P. stands to go. “Tell Ilya. About the strawberries.”

He doesn’t tell Ilya, but he does tell his parents, when he sees them on Thursday. His mom immediately starts glowing. “That’s great, Shane. That’s really, really good. Strawberries are important.”

“Why?”

His dad nods; he’s also excited. Hopeful. Shane regrets telling them. “Lidiya is allergic,” his dad says.

“Oh.” And now Shane feels it too, something desperate and triumphant and bright. “Well, that’s a good thing to know.”

“You’re sure Ilya didn’t mention it? You just, remembered, on your own?” His mom is peering at him with these wide, smiling eyes.

Shane shrugs. “I don’t think he said anything.”

“That’s really great, Shane,” his dad praises. And Shane feels a swell of pride, as he has anytime his parents have told him he did a good job; and he curses himself for letting himself feel this.

Fridays are the third-best day, because Friday precedes Saturday and Sunday, the best days of all. Friday starts with physio. Marc-Antoine takes Shane on a walk – if you can call it that – crutches clacking on the hard tile as they circle the rehab ward. This is the longest walk they’ve been on.

As they reach the elevator, Marc-Antoine gets a twinkle in their eye. “Want to see one of my favourite spots?” they ask in French.

“Okay,” Shane says hesitantly.

Marc-Antoine presses the down button and they board the elevator for three.

“What’s on three?”

“Obstetrics.”

They exit the elevator and round a corner, then another, making slow, clackety progress. And then, Shane and Marc-Antoine are standing in front of a big glass window overlooking a sea of babies.

There are so many, and they’re so small. They wear tiny little toques and are swaddled in a rainbow of blankets. Most of them are sleeping, peaceful and still; but some of them gaze up with wide, wild eyes, drinking in the world.

Shane swallows. It dawns on him that his children were once this small.

He’s missed everything. Their entire lives.

“C’est—” Shane begins, but French is failing him.

“C’est magique, ouais?”

“Ouais.”

They stand for a little longer, watching. If a tear falls from his eye, Shane doesn’t notice.

Back on the rehab floor, next is cognitive testing. Usually a resident comes and shows him some flashcards and quizzes his recall time. But today, it’s Dr. Thibault.

“Mr. Hollander, how are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Shane answers, for the second time that week.

“Shall we run a few tests, then?”

“Let’s do it.”

They barrel through word lists, sequences of letters and numbers, recall and delayed recall and attention and executive reasoning. Shane knows he’s acing it.

“Mr. Hollander, pending an assessment from doctors Ismail and Aguilar, I’m prepared to release you to outpatient in the next week.”

Shane smiles involuntarily. “Really?”

Dr. Thibault nods. “You’ll continue your care at the University of Ottawa hospital system. I’ve already put together a team.”

“What about—” Shane blinks, starts again. “I still don’t have my memory back.”

“I know.”

“Isn’t that—I don’t know, shouldn’t that have happened already?”

“My clinical opinion is that yes, it should have.”

“Then why hasn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will it, ever?”

“I don’t know.”

Shane nods, looking down at his hands. He exhales. “What if it doesn’t? Do I just, live like this? Like, half my life is just gone?”

“I am an excellent surgeon, Mr. Hollander.” Dr. Thibault closes her casebook and looks him over, an uncharacteristically soft expression on her face. “Your brain’s recovery has been no minor miracle. No swelling, no scarring, no residual bleeds. You remain at risk of stroke as a survivor of multiple TBIs in the past; but you will manage that with diet, exercise, and regular check-ups.” She pauses, lips pursed. “I know the brain the way you know hockey. And still in hockey, you find some things unpredictable, no?”

Shane looks at her, looks back down.

“The brain is wonderous. It offers many surprises.” She gathers her casebook and clipboard, and for the first time in Shane’s presence, she smiles. “It’s been an honour, Mr. Hollander. Dr. Tremblay will be in on Monday to provide his discharge assessment.”

---------------

Saturday mornings start like this: their voices in the hallway, ebullient, chattering. A crescendo of laughter that makes Shane’s heart swell, until suddenly the door opens and there they are.

Every time; every damn time, Shane feels like he might explode from happiness, just from seeing them there in the doorway.

Niko always speeds in first. He’s taken to keeping his own version of Ilya’s composition notebook. He writes down everything that happened at school that week, then regales Shane with the news.

“Mr. Martin is making us do times tables,” he reports. “Also it was Gerald’s birthday and his mom brought in cupcakes.”

“Gerald is your best friend?”

“No, he’s my second best friend. Jeremy is my best friend.”

“Right, right. Got it.”

Meanwhile, Lidiya decorates his cast with stickers, glow-in-the-dark stars and galaxies, humming to herself while focused on her task.

They play card games and watch YouTube videos of unlikely animal friendships. Niko teaches him how to play Mario on Switch. Now that Shane is mobile, they sometimes make their way downstairs to the cafeteria and pick out ice cream bars from the freezer.

Every time he sees them, he learns something new.

Lidiya is quiet, but not shy. She’s a force. She’s steady in the way she takes things in, analyzes, and decides what to do or say.

Niko is funny. Self-aware. He chirps his sister playfully, but has extraordinary affection for her. He isn’t afraid to make mistakes.

Ilya is a really, really good father. Fucking of course he is. He’s attentive, firm, and goofy. He speaks to them with respect and level-headedness. He hatches plans with them, treats them as co-conspirators.

They adore him.

On Sundays, a volunteer named Suzanne brings Philippe to visit Shane’s room. Philippe is a ten-year-old husky who wears a therapy dog vest and a polka-dot bowtie. The kids love Philippe. Ilya also loves Philippe. Shane thinks that Philippe is just okay.

Ilya snaps a photo one afternoon: Philippe curled up in Shane’s bed, Lidiya’s arms around the dog’s neck, Niko’s hand stroking the top of his head. And Shane looking on at the scene so fondly, like it’s something fragile and temporary that might disappear if he looks away.

Ilya has the photo printed, and he tapes it up amid the growing collection on the wall. And Shane thinks, maybe this could work. Making new memories, every day, until the ones he’s lost don’t matter anymore.

Maybe.   

---------------

Everyone is there on Shane’s last day at Royal Vic. This is when Shane discovers that, the entire time, Ilya has been handing out autographed merchandise like candy. Nurse Persaud, Marc-Antoine, and Dr. Ismail are lined up in Centaurs jerseys; Dr. Tremblay and J.P. wear matching Cens hoodies; and Dr. Aguilar is in a Team Canada fleece. Obstinately, Dr. Thibault wears an old Metros jersey from her own collection. Number twenty-four.

Shane shakes hands with each of them, while Ilya envelopes them in an enthusiastic hug, one by one.

And that’s sort of – it. It’s almost unsettling, the abruptness of it all.

“Before we go,” Ilya tells Shane as they exit the elevator into the lobby, “we have one more stop.”

“Where?”

“Other hospital. Just follow me.”

“What other—?” But Ilya is already strides ahead of him, out the automatic doors and into the outside world. Stupid fucking crutches.

It’s cold; the air bites at his eyes, and a thin layer of snow powders the walkway. He follows Ilya along a winding path between buildings, past a geometric sculpture, toward a sign: Hôpital de Montréal pour enfants.

Glass doors slide open, and Ilya stands inside, beckoning. “Come on. Come see.”

They’re inside an atrium, and it’s like a hospital illustrated by Dr. Seuss. Desks and chairs and lighting fixtures curve and twist in a palette of bright colours. Mixed in with the sounds he’s grown familiar with over these weeks – the PA, the buzzing lights, the bustle – there are babies crying and children laughing and parents scolding.

Ilya is pointing up at something. Shane makes his way to his side and follows his gaze. Above a glass bannister on the second floor is a grand entryway labelled in bold lettering, The Yuna and David Hollander Centre for Pediatric Cardiology.

“You’ve been donating here since your second season in Montreal. So generous, they want to name it after you. But you asked for this instead.”

Shane blinks. He’s not sure what to say. “You didn’t tell me about this.”

“Ah, well. Some things I thought, maybe, would be a nice surprise.” He looks at Shane, a playful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Shall we go home now?”

Shane looks one more time at his parents’ names, then back at Ilya. He nods decisively.

“Let’s go home.”

Chapter 7: Home

Chapter Notes

OTTAWA

NOVEMBER 2031

The house is a normal house.

It’s large, perhaps, but not a mansion; old construction, elegant, with arch-shaped windows. They’re in Kanata; it’s suburban, quiet, close to the wooded park where Shane used to run down winding trails when he was a teen. (Which still doesn’t feel so long ago.)

Ilya clocks balloons tied to the mailbox as he pulls into the driveway. “They’ve prepared something for you,” he intones.

Shane doesn’t say anything. Ilya fetches the crutches from the backseat and helps Shane out of the car. He takes it in, the white clapboard, the stone walkway.

“Ah, Mr. Real Estate. You insisted on a house with a chimney,” Ilya tells him, a smile in his voice. “Before we were even sure about kids. Just in case, you said, we need a chimney. So Santa Claus can visit.”

They make their way up the path, and Shane thinks, this is it. The post-brain surgery version of the Cup. He won physical therapy after all; he’s home. So why does this feel so – incomplete?

Ilya knocks loudly on the door. “Is anybody home?” he calls. “I have special delivery.” Inside, they can hear giggling.

“Welcome home!” they shout in unison – Niko, Lidiya, his mom and dad, smiling brightly, waving a banner that, through a multimedia exploration of glitter, stickers, and paint, proclaims the simple missive: DAD.

They’re looking at him expectantly, and he has to say something, so he says, “Um. Thank you.”

Ilya throws his arm around Shane’s shoulders and fills the silence without missing a beat. “Who wants to give your dad a tour, huh? Who will be tour guide?” And Niko and Lidiya are jumping up and down, raising their hands, and Ilya says, “Fine, fine, we can have two tour guides. Where should we go first?”

The kids huddle and stage-whisper in a concoction of English and Russian, then Niko announces, “We’ll start with the gold medals.”

“Ah. Excellent choice! Shane, we are very lucky, we have the best award-winning tour guides right here.”

Shane looks to his parents, who have been watching the scene unfold with identical bittersweet expressions, these forlorn smiles and shining eyes that are making Shane worry he’s doing something wrong. Shane grasps onto the crutches and moves to follow Ilya, who is trailing after Niko and Lidiya as they excitedly plan their tour. His mom touches his shoulder as he passes.

“You okay?” she asks plainly.

“Yeah. Yes.” Shane avoids her eyes. “It’s just weird, is all. Being here.”

(Here, this house, which he’s lived in for the better part of a decade, which he and Ilya had picked out together, envisioning their future – yet here he stands like a houseguest, a stranger.)

“I know, hon.”

He tilts his head toward the hall, forces a smile. “You coming on the tour?”

They walk slowly with Shane, catching up to the group in the living room. Niko takes charge, brows furrowed in concentration. “Here we have the living room, as you can see.” Lidiya gestures broadly around them, a helpful assistant. “And here you can see all the medals from the Olympics.”

The medals are framed, lined up above the fireplace. In the middle, between silver and bronze, are two golds, framed together – and Shane realizes, he hadn’t considered that Ilya would have played beside him for Canada that year, as a citizen.

Shane looks around, overwhelmed. The whole room is a museum dedicated to their lives. He breaks from the tour group, drawn to the photos cluttering the built-in bookcase.

There’s a photo of a small blonde boy in ice skates, and a woman in skates holding his hands from behind to steady him. Her face is hidden as she looks down in concentration at the boy, her hair in tumbling curls.

“That’s Baba Ira,” Lidiya says quietly, coming to his side. “And that’s Papa, learning how to skate.”

“Oh,” says Shane. And now he truly feels at sea. For nearly two months, Ilya has steadfastly taught him about their life together, reading from a notebook so lovingly filled with the events Ilya most thought Shane would want to know. And yet, it has only been about Shane, and what he has missed. Shane knows next to nothing about Ilya’s past or his family. He knows nothing about his husband at all.

“This one is good,” Ilya says coming over. “Look. This was citizenship day.” He points at another frame, Shane and Ilya standing in front of Parliament, wearing white and red, waving miniature Canadian flags. Ilya beams at the camera as Shane kisses him on the cheek.

Ilya dips his face to Shane’s ear, breath grazing his neck. “We had very good sex that night,” he whispers. “Maple syrup was involved.”

“There are kids here,” Shane whispers back. He feels his face flush.

Ilya ignores him. “This one also is good. See?” It’s Shane, looking intently at the bundle in his arms, where he holds the smallest, reddest baby wrapped in a blanket which Shane recognizes as his own from childhood. “Do you believe Niko was this small once? Like a jellybean.”

Numbly, Shane continues to walk the perimeter of the room. There are beach days, snowmen, a vacation in Banff. Some with his parents, some with teammates. Family skate at a Winter Classic – 2029, Ilya tells him; Denver – and this one nearly breaks him, because there they are, the four of them, matching in Cens jerseys, and it’s something Shane never thought he would have, could have. His family, with him on the ice, just like every other player.

“Did you see this, Shane?” his dad calls suddenly from across the room. He beckons Shane over as he points at a certificate framed above the sofa.

Shane comes closer and sees his name written across a diploma, University of Ottawa emblazoned at the top. “What’s this?” he asks curiously as Ilya reaches his side.

“This is your honorary doctorate,” Ilya says, as if it’s obvious.

“My doctorate?”

“Honorary. Don’t get cocky.”

Shane laughs, and exhales some of the tension that’s been building in his chest ever since he stepped through the door. “I expect you to call me Dr. Hollander from now on.”

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

---------------

They have dinner, something simple that his mom had dad had brought over, chicken and green beans and potatoes. For Lidiya, though, chicken nuggets, which Shane learns he is supposed to cut into pieces for her, making sure they don’t touch any of the nearby sides.

He learns a lot over dinner.

He learns that his parents love being grandparents. They’d been trading places with Ilya for so many weeks, holding down the fort in Ottawa, taking the kids to school and hockey and play dates and birthday parties. All things Shane should have been doing, should have been able to, but whatever guilt is gnawing in his mind is subsumed by the elation on their faces as they pass plates of potatoes and beans, chattering in playful, gentle voices, grinning at every little thing the children have to say as if it’s the most brilliant bon mot, agreeing with their musings seriously, dutifully, like chiefs of staff to two very small but very important prime ministers.

Babushka and Dedushka, the kids call them affectionately.

He learns, next, that Lidiya has just started on cello at school; a Suzuki class.

“I did Suzuki violin,” Shane comments, not thinking much of it. “I was really young. Like, three.”

Ilya’s eyebrows shoot up. “I did not know this. Yuna, how could you keep this from me? Are there pictures?”

His mom considers. “David, there must be pictures, right? He did that recital?”

Shane groans, sinking into his chair.

“What’s the matter?” Lidiya whispers, leaning close to him.

“Nothing,” Shane whispers back. “Your grandparents are embarrassing me.”

“I don’t think they’re embarrassing,” she offers. “I think they just like remembering things about you. It’s being nice.”

And so Shane learns this too: his daughter is empathetic, and perceptive, and a fucking genius.

(He learns what pride feels like.)

He learns, as well, that Niko attended his first speed skating class, just yesterday.

“Do you like it?” Shane asks curiously.

“It’s really cool.” Niko nods emphatically. “But, I have an enemy.”

Ilya gasps, genuinely intrigued. “An enemy?”

“Léo,” Niko grumbles, narrowing his eyes. “He’s faster than me.”

“No, that’s not your enemy,” Shane corrects through a mouthful of chicken. “That’s your rival.”

“What’s the difference?” Niko asks.

Shane feels Ilya watching him, but keeps his eyes fixed on his son across the table. He finishes his bite. “Well, an enemy is someone you want to beat because you’re a good person and they’re a bad person.”

“Like a superhero and a bad guy?”

“Right. But a rival is like – they’re just like you. A rival is someone who is better than you at something, just a little, so it makes you want to work hard and be better, too.”

“Like you and Papa.”

“Well – yeah,” Shane agrees. He looks over at Ilya, who wears an inscrutable expression. “I mean, we were, I guess? A while ago.”

“No, we are rivals still,” Ilya says. His voice is light, but there’s something in his eyes. “Maybe not on the ice now, but definitely at Monopoly.”

“Can we play Monopoly tonight?” Lidiya asks, brightening.

“Another night, Dad can beat us all at Monopoly,” Ilya assures. “It’s already late. We do not have seventeen hours for this terrible game.”

---------------

“Say good-night to Babushka and Dedushka!”

There’s a flurry of hugs good-bye in the entryway. His dad squeezes Shane tighter than usual.

“You’re good here,” he says into Shane’s ear. “You’ve got this.”

“Thanks.” Shane pulls away and nods resolutely. “I, um—just. Thank you. Yeah.”

And then, they’re gone, back to their own home, their own lives. And now, it’s bedtime.

There are rules at bedtime, and Shane is grateful for it. There’s an order to things: the donning of pajamas, the brushing of teeth. Shane follows Ilya upstairs – slowly, in hobbling hops – intent on being helpful. For Lidiya, he finds a fresh tube of bubblegum toothpaste in a medicine cabinet. For Niko, he uncovers polar bear pajamas in a basket of clean laundry.

See? Helpful.

Ilya taps his shoulder. “You will tuck Niko in. I will do Lidiya. Good?”

Shane’s eyes widen; this wasn’t in the script. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Niko will tell you,” Ilya promises.

And so he finds himself standing in the doorway of his son’s bedroom. There’s a poster of the Canadian national team, 2030; a lamp shaped like a giraffe, neck propping up a glowing lampshade; a collection of medals and trophies glinting on a shelf. Beside the bed is a bookcase, crowded with colourful spines and a menagerie of stuffed animals.

“You can come in,” Niko says. He’s sitting cross-legged on his bed in his polar bear pajamas, clutching a book.

Shane leans one crutch on the doorframe and keeps the other tucked under his arm. He hops inside. “What next?” he asks.

“Usually, you kind of fix my blankets and make sure I’m warm.”

“Okay.” Shane leans over the bed as Niko curls up, and lifts the blankets to cover him snugly. “Like this?”

Niko nods. “Yeah, that’s good.”

“Now what?”

“Now you can sit next to me and we read together.”

Shane carefully sits on the edge of the bed. Niko scoots closer, leaning against his side. “Here,” he says, handing Shane a creased paperback.

Shane opens the book and riffles the pages, coming to a dog-ear about a third of the way through. “Starting here?”

“Yeah. We take turns. You go first.”

And he does. He reads about a girl named Bea who plays hockey on an all-girls team called the Geese. Bea has a crush on her team captain, Gabi. He thinks, a book like this would not have existed, when he was eight. Maybe it would have helped.

He and Niko alternate paragraphs; Niko’s reading voice is steady, confident. Smart. Shane could listen to him forever.

They finish the chapter, and Niko reaches over to dog-ear the next page. “For tomorrow.”

Shane sets the book on the nightstand. He’s not sure what to do next. “Thank you for teaching me what to do,” he tells Niko.

“’Course,” Niko says sleepily. “You teach us stuff all the time.”

“Like what?” Shane asks, curious.

“Mm,” Niko mumbles. “Like French. And loon calls. And tying our skates with the secret knot.”

Shane exhales, and he watches Niko settle into his pillow, eyelids heavy. He leans forward and drops a kiss onto Niko’s hair, holding a hand to the side of his head. “Good night, Niko,” he says quietly, and turns off the giraffe lamp. A galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars pulse to life on the ceiling, neon green, distant.

“That’s good, see?” says Niko. “You remembered what to do next.” He yawns. “Maybe you’ll remember more things soon.”

---------------

Ilya hands Shane a clean towel. “You can sleep here,” he says softly. He picks up a pillow from the bed and tucks it under his arm like a football.

“Where will you sleep, then?”

“Guest room.” Ilya shrugs. “Just down the hall, if you need me.” He turns to go.

“Ilya.” Shane feels small, asking this. “I don’t think I want to be alone tonight.”

“You want me to stay?”

Shane nods. “Is that okay?”

“It’s okay.” Ilya turns back into the room, replaces the pillow from where he took it.

“Do you, um, have like, a toothbrush I can use?”

Ilya chuckles at this, even though he’s sad. “You’re not a guest here, Shane. It’s your house. You can use your own toothbrush.”

“Oh,” Shane says, looking down. “Yeah. Duh.” This is so weird. His house, where he lives, with his family, but he doesn’t even know where the washroom is.

“Washroom is en-suite,” Ilya offers, tilting his chin toward a door in the far left corner. “Through there.”

Shane is startled by this unwitting act of mind-reading. “Thanks.” He slips a crutch under one arm and hops his way to the washroom. Ilya follows.

“This one is yours,” Ilya says, handing him a perfectly ordinary plastic toothbrush, with a green handle. Shane has never seen it before a day in his life. They brush their teeth, side by side, and Shane wonders how many times in their lives they have done this together, this mundane thing.

Shane hobbles back to the bed and leans his crutch against the wall. He goes to take off his shirt, hesitates, leaves it on. Looks to Ilya for guidance.

“Shane, it’s okay,” he assures from the other side of the bed. “Wear it, don’t wear it. Just be comfortable.”

“Right.” Shane takes a breath, steeling himself, pulls off his shirt, folds it quickly, and scrambles into the bed, wrapping the sheets over his body.

“In your memory, we did hook up, right? The one time?” Ilya’s looking at him quizzically. “Why is this big deal? I’ve seen much more of you shirtless. Even you can remember that.”

“I don’t know,” Shane says. “It just is.”

“Okay, well, I am taking off my shirt now, yes?” And he doesn’t wait for approval, just does, and Shane looks away because this is all too weird. He feels like he’s encroaching on something private. Someone else’s life.

Ilya settles into the bed next to Shane, and it’s clear that they both belong here, the mattress curving to their bodies. On Shane’s side, pillows are plumped neatly in a pile. On Ilya’s side, one mangled pillow, half out of its sham, is crumpled behind his head.

“Why did you ask me to stay if you were going to be weird about it?” Ilya mutters as he turns off the table lamp.

“I’m not being weird.”

“You are, a little.”

“I—” Shane pauses, unsure of the answer himself. “Because you’re comforting, I guess.” He turns to lie on his side, facing Ilya. “It’s weird as fuck to be in a house, in a bedroom, that I’ve never seen before, but it’s plastered with pictures of me, and my family, and my honorary doctorate degree, apparently, and I’m just supposed to sleep here, alone? And you’re like, constant. Since waking up, from the accident, I mean. You’ve been with me. And I just want that tonight. Constant.”

“Constant,” Ilya repeats sleepily. His face is smooshed against his ragged pillow and his curls are spilled across the sheets and his eyes are half-closed. He’s on top of the covers; his body looms, even in the dark, the curves of his muscles, the valley of his neck. Shane regrets having suggested they share a bed. This is dangerous.

“Sorry I said anything.” Shane turns to his other side, and now he’s facing the wall where their family portrait is mounted, Lidiya just a baby in his arms, and something in him breaks.

It’s loss.

This house, this room, the bedrooms down the hall inhabited by tiny sleeping figures who share his DNA, and none of it feels like his. Like he has no claim.

He’s shaking a little, crying a little, hoping Ilya doesn’t notice, but of course he does, and now his hand is on Shane’s shoulder and he’s pulling Shane into his arms and pressing a kiss into the top of his hair.

“I’m fine,” Shane objects. “I’ll be okay. Just freaking out. You don’t have to, like, comfort me.”

“Shhh.” Ilya traces his thumb back and forth where his hands intertwine with Shane’s folded arms. “It’s not for you. Is for me.” He presses his face into the back of Shane’s head, and his breath is warm, and his arms are warm, and Shane’s breathing gradually slows. Ilya whispers, “I miss holding you.”

They stay like that for a while. Enmeshed.

“I, um—” Shane begins suddenly, breaking the silence. “Wait, are you still awake?”

“No,” Ilya responds.

“Right.” Shane turns back to face Ilya, whose arms stay encircled around him like a protective force. “I got dressed up. That night.”

“What is it you are saying,” Ilya chides blearily. His eyes are half closed.

“The night we—our first night. Room 1410.” Shane shakes his head. “Why am I even telling you this? This is stupid. You probably don’t even remember. It must be like, a distant memory for you.”

Ilya blinks himself awake. Looks at his husband earnestly. “I remember it well, Shane.”

“Oh.” Shane lowers his eyes, suddenly aware of every square centimetre where their skin is touching. “That’s embarrassing, probably.”

“No. Not embarrassing. Is a good memory.” Ilya casts his thumb across Shane’s chin, gently tilting his head against the pillow, until their eyes meet again. “One of my favourites.”

“Why?” It was just a few months ago, for him. He can replay the terror, the uncertainty. The awkwardness. The haste.

“Because.” Ilya shrugs and the sheets rustle beneath his shoulders. “I was so scared to knock on the door, but when I did, a boy with beautiful freckles answered.” He moves his thumb from Shane’s chin, up along his jaw and to his cheeks, tracing the freckles which he has memorized, every constellation, even in the dark of the room.

Shane’s heart flips. He closes his eyes while Ilya caresses his face so gently, a whisper of a touch.

He hasn’t earned this. To be touched this way. Lovingly. He hasn’t lived a life that would lead to this – this touch, this bed. This man.

(It would be easy to fall in love with Ilya Rozanov. Shane can see how it happened. It would be so easy. Maybe he’s already falling.)

“What do you mean, you got dressed up?” Ilya prompts softly, resting his thumb on Shane’s temple, tracing his hairline.

Sharply, Shane recalls his train of thought. “I put on a suit.”

Ilya’s brow furrows. “I don’t remember you wearing a suit.”

“I changed.” Shane laughs, drily, at how ridiculous it sounds. “‘Nine-o’clock. Maybe I knock,’” he quips in a bad Russian accent.

“I do not sound like this,” Ilya objects.

Shane rolls his eyes. “So I went back to my room and put on a suit. Like, with a jacket and tie and everything. And then I sat there and felt like an idiot, so I changed, and waited for it to be nine.”

A smile spreads on Ilya’s face, and Shane can see it, warm and soft, even though it is dark. “In all our years together, you never told me this.”

“Really?”

Ilya chuckles. “Really.”

“Hm.” Feeling brave, Shane rolls onto his back and shuffles closer to Ilya, into the curve of his body. He takes Ilya’s arm and wraps it around him. “Good to know that I have some memories that you don’t have, for once.”

Shane’s eyes are closed, but he can feel Ilya looking at him.

A soft kiss brushes his face, then another. Both sides, where his freckles pepper below his eyes and across his nose.

So soft, he can barely hear: “Спокойной ночи, моя любовь.”

“Good night, Ilya,” he replies, drifting.

Chapter End Notes

The book referenced is "Bea Mullins Takes a Shot" by Emily Deibert

Chapter 8: Morning

Shane wakes up when the door creaks open. It’s light out; a muted sunbeam glows through the thin green curtain on the window. Outside, birds sing.

He lifts his head, peering at the doorway. A small figure wordlessly enters the room and climbs into the bed, settling like a puzzle piece into the space between her fathers.

Shane isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do. Ilya is still asleep.

Hesitantly, he taps her on the shoulder. “Good morning, Lidiya,” he whispers.

“Morning,” she replies sleepily. “I’m cold.”

“Oh.” This, Shane can fix. Actionable. He lifts the sheets to tuck her in, wrapping them snugly around her shoulders. “Better?”

“Better,” she agrees, and flashes a small smile. Shane could drown in it.

It must still be early. It’s a school day, but no alarms have sounded. Lidiya’s eyelids grow heavy, and she doesn’t try to fight it. Soon, she drifts off, and Shane finds himself watching his daughter sleep.

“Is the best, yes?” comes a whisper. Ilya doesn’t open his eyes, but he’s smiling.

Shane doesn’t respond. He’s frozen, entranced. Any movement, any noise might disturb this perfect tableau. The rise and fall of Lidiya’s breathing, her dark hair a mess across her face. Completely at peace.

“Go back to sleep,” Ilya whispers. “Alarm is later.”

He doesn’t go back to sleep. Instead, he listens to his daughter breathe, while birds sing.

---------------

When the alarms do go off, Ilya yawns theatrically, stretching his arms wide above his head. Shane wonders if he’s been awake the whole time, too.

“Good morning, sleepy koala bear,” he greets. “And good morning to Lidochka, too.”

She giggles, snuggling closer into Ilya’s side. “I’m the koala bear, not Dad.”

“Mm, no, I think Dad is koala bear. He is cute like koala bear, no?” And then he’s scooping Lidiya into his arms and helping her off the bed, throwing on a sweatshirt he’s picked up from the floor, and there’s such an ease to it all, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to wake up on a random Wednesday with a child beside them, and usher her into morning with gentle jokes and an impossibly soft smile.

“You need help?” Ilya calls over his shoulder. He hovers by the door, Lidiya clinging to his neck, indeed, like a koala.

“No, I’m good,” says Shane, reaching for the crutches that lean against the wall. Slowly, he swings his legs over the side of the bed and hoists himself to stand. He follows Ilya downstairs.

“Коля, завтрак!” Ilya calls behind them, and Shane hears a muffled Russian retort from Niko’s room.

They arrive in the kitchen, and Ilya sets Lidiya down on the counter, her sockfeet dangling. Ilya opens the fridge and procures cartons of berries, a jar of peanut butter, an apple, maple syrup, yogurt.

“How can I help?” Shane asks.

“Waffles in toaster please,” Ilya instructs, head still buried in the fridge. “Eight waffles. Take from freezer.”

Waffles in toaster. He can do that. Awesome.

They move through the kitchen like hockey players on the ice, which is to say, not gracefully at all. Unbalanced with only one crutch, Shane has no idea where anything is. He turns about, clocking the toaster, opening a cabinet for plates but finding only cups. But Ilya reads him like a good defenseman – reads his mind, really. Hands him a knife before he knows to ask for it, offers paper towels before Shane has even turned on the faucet to rinse the berries.

Shane looks down at the finished breakfast, pleased with himself. The peanut butter waffles have blackberry eyes and apple smiles. Kids like that sort of thing, right?

Over his shoulder, Ilya snorts. “This is, ah—this is not something you normally would do,” he observes.

Shoot. He’s messed up. “Is it okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Ilya says, kissing his cheek and reaching past for the silverware drawer. “They will love this.”

Niko comes downstairs in a crumpled school uniform, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t want to go to school.”

“Yes you do,” Ilya reminds, setting plates of waffles and bowls of yogurt on the table. “You want to see Jeremy and do your spelling bee and eat pretzels.”

Niko rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

They eat, and the whole time, Ilya is joking, ribbing. The kids smile the entire time, even when they don’t want to, even when they are being chirped relentlessly by their own father. It’s a dynamic Shane never had with his own parents as a kid, as loving as they are. This is something different – warm and light – Ilya’s love like helium holding his family aloft.

Lidiya dashes upstairs after breakfast and returns in uniform, tucked in, crisp. The antithesis of her brother. She stands in front of Shane expectantly, holding out a hair tie.

“Uh—”

“Mm, Lidochka, I do your hair today.” Ilya beckons with one hand, zipping a lunchbox with the other. “Shane, come learn.”

Shane watches Ilya deftly braid their daughter’s hair, hair tie between his lips, deep in concentration. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“You will practice,” Ilya assures. “Or, you will remember.” He shrugs, and passes a pair of lunchboxes across the counter. “Are we ready to go?”

“Ready.” “Ready!” come the unison response.

“Back in fifteen,” Ilya says over his shoulder, ushering the kids to the entryway. There’s a rustle of coats and a zipping of backpacks.

Then they’re gone. Shane stands alone in the empty kitchen.

---------------

He may as well study.

He starts with the drawers, opening them one by one. Silverware closest to the sink, then bakeware, then a whole drawer of knives and spatulas. He commits their places to memory and moves on to cabinets.

He ought to know where things are, in his own house.

He goes through linen closets, the garage, the pantry. He starts taking notes in a blank composition notebook that he finds in a warmly lit room that reminds him of his dad’s study.

Cereal they like – Special K, Honey Nut Cheerios

Upstairs closet – Large towels top shelf, small towels middle shelf

He arrives at a closet that appears to just be filled with stuff. A yellow raincoat, old hockey sticks, a deflated air mattress. Atop a high shelf is a cardboard box with a lid. Intriguingly, the box is labelled in Sharpie as, simply, “The Box.”

Well, obviously, he has to see what’s inside. It's not snooping if it's his box, in his own house, right?

Right?

Gingerly, he lifts The Box from its shelf. It’s not heavy, but it’s definitely full. He tucks it under one arm, crutch under the other, and carries it into the study.

He sets the box down on the floor and lowers himself next to it, losing his balance a bit, his bad leg stretched out in front of him. Then, he removes the lid from the box and peers inside.

Envelopes – hundreds, perhaps. And postcards, and scraps of paper, and photos. His glasses are in his shirt pocket; he slides them on and picks out a folded, typed letter.

Dear Shane and Ilya, I am a fifty-year-old trans man. I dreamed of playing hockey when I was young, but I never got to. You have given me courage to join my community team. Thank you, thank you, from Wisconsin.

Dear Mr. Shane, We are Mrs. Nguyen’s Grade 4 class at Nootka Elementary, Vancouver, BC. We chose to learn about you for our Canadian History unit! Enclosed are acrostic poems we have written based on the word PRIDE. Thank you for inspiring us!

Илья: Здесь, в Омске, мы слышали о вас. Новости были к вам неблагоприятными, но знайте, что вы герой. Многие из нас в ЛГБТ-сообществе видят в вас символ надежды. Спасибо вам за вашу смелость.

I’ve enclosed a photo of my uncle Eric, who died of AIDS in 1991. He played hockey very seriously in uni and was being considered for the national league here in the UK. But, he chose to come out instead, and live his life authentically. He would have fucking loved you blokes.

“Ah,” Ilya says from the doorway. Shane didn’t hear him come in. “I see you’ve found The Box.”

Shane lifts his glasses off the bridge of his nose with one hand and wipes away tears with the other. “This is, um.” He gestures at the mess before him, the contents of The Box strewn across the floor. “This is wild, Ilya.”

“Can I show you my favourite?”

Shane nods and moves over, shuffling the cards and letters out of the way to clear a spot. Ilya lowers himself onto the floor comfortably, and peers around him. “Help look. Is a blue envelope.”

They sift through the piles and rifle through the box until Shane sees it. “Aha.”

“Open it. Read.”

Shane does.

Inside the envelope is a piece of loose-leaf paper, folded in thirds. He unfurls it to see a young person’s handwriting, angular, a bit messy. It’s in pencil.

September 16, 2021

Dear Mr. Hollander,

My name is Colin Yamamura and I am from Idaho, USA. I am in 7th grade and I play hockey. I want to be a hockey player when I grow up. I want to play for Seattle. I like Ottawa too though.

I think I am gay because I really like my best friend. His name is Aaron. I can’t tell him though because maybe he doesn’t like me. Or even if he does I think his family would be mad because they’re religious.

My family would also be mad I think. My parents are very strict. My grandparents used to be in an internment camp called Minidoka. My mom says that me and my brother have to work hard and do well in school and get good jobs so we can be successful and be a good legacy for my grandparents.

Anyways. I know you probably won’t read this. You probably get like a million letters a day. I just wanted to say that I want to be like you when I’m older. I hope I can be brave enough to tell someone.

Sincerely,

Colin Yamamura

“You wrote back,” Ilya notes softly, as he sees Shane’s eyes reach the bottom of the page.

“What did I say?”

“I don’t know. You never told me.” Ilya shrugs. “But it must have been very inspiring. Want to know why this is my favourite?”

“Why?”

“Because,” Ilya flashes a smile, “Colin Yamamura was number four pick in 2027 MLH draft. First out draftee, ever.”

“Fuck. That’s—” Shane can’t find a word that fits. “Shit. I’m crying again.”

Ilya grins, knowing he’s about to make it worse. He takes his phone out of his pocket, opens Instagram, and finds @yamz_on_ice. “Look.”

Shane takes the phone. The account has 500,000 followers. The bio reads:

Hockey @mlh @seattlelegends 🏒

Fiancé @aaron_from_boise 🏳️‍🌈💍

Olympian @teamusa @usahockey 2030 🥈

“You’re evil,” Shane sobs, pushing the phone back into Ilya’s hands. “Fuck.”

“We’re invited to the wedding.”

“Asshole. Are we really?”

“We are. It’s next summer.”

Shane wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands, sniffling. “Jesus.”

“Is a special one, yes?” Ilya takes the letter from Shane’s lap and folds it gently back into the blue envelope. “Whole box is special, but this one…” He trails off.

They’re silent for a while. Shane, ever himself, starts stacking the papers into neat piles. Ilya watches this fondly.

Shane is the one to speak first. “If we’d had him, you know, back then. Things would’ve been easier.”

Ilya nods, understanding. “But we didn’t have him. He had us.”

Shane doesn’t look up, focused on his task, sweeping a mess of postcards into alignment. Ilya scoots closer to him, leans over and plants a kiss on his temple. “I am sad that you don’t remember our life,” Ilya says, voice low, tentative. “You know this. But mostly, I am sad that you don’t remember you.”

Shane looks up then, eyes uncertain.

“You have always been brave, and kind,” Ilya continues. “Always. But you grew this—resilience. You began to speak your heart.”

He reaches up to touch Shane’s face, still stained with tears, grazing his freckles with the back of his hand.

“You would be proud of who you became.”

Chapter 9: Rhythm

Chapter Notes

Thank you to everyone who's been reading! I'm so appreciative.

OTTAWA

DECEMBER 2031

The cast comes off a couple weeks before Christmas, replaced by a boot, and now physical therapy can begin in earnest.

It’s a team of two: the Centaurs’ staff PT, a woman named Claire who Shane has apparently met many times, who helped him through a shoulder thing last year (he doesn’t remember her at all; she’s very polite about it); and Tomasz, a referral from the uOttawa sports medicine clinic, hand-picked by Dr. Ismail herself.

“I went to Cégep with Marc-Antoine,” Tomasz tells him at their first meeting. “I’m glad they were on your physio team. Absolute GOAT, eh?”

Shane isn’t sure what that means, so he just nods.

Walking is the first battle. Speed, agility, strength – skating – these will all come later. Right now, he just needs to walk a length of three metres without holding onto the railing.

He feels useless, and angry. But mainly, he wants – needs – to be back on the fucking ice.

And so he eases into a routine: School-day mornings with peanut butter waffles; physio appointments; cushioning the defeat of every stumble with an afternoon spent restlessly on the sofa – reading, studying Russian, combing through his mom’s binder for more details of his own life to grasp onto – Ilya by his side, always; sometimes errands, still on crutches – Loblaws, Shoppers; sometimes counselling, virtual, with J.P.; after-school: hockey and speed skating and cello classes; dinners that light him up, hearing about their days, about the small but important problems that populate their lives, about the people they care about, friendships, dramas; and homework done quietly on the floor of the living room, soft conversations in elementary French, until bedtime beckons.

Some days he thinks, how incredible. How lucky, this life he gets to live, this house so lived-in, these children who will light the world on fire one day.

Other days, he thinks, he doesn’t deserve this. He’s an imposter, playacting through someone else’s life. He’s missed everything; he’s lost everything.

It’s a wild pendulum swing that Shane can’t bring himself to articulate to J.P., nor his parents, nor Ilya.  Especially not Ilya.

Ilya, who has been a beacon. Whose mission, from the moment Shane woke up from a stroke and surgery and a fucking coma, has been to make him, singularly, comfortable and happy and fulfilled. Who makes Shane laugh every day, even when it’s hard, even when the pendulum has swung so far out of its arc that Shane feels buried, trapped. Who navigates this life with Shane, this weird fractured impressionist painting of a life, with such a gentle acceptance and patience that Shane fears he’s dreaming it.

The week before Christmas, Ilya gets a text that causes him to sit up in bed.

“Something wrong?” Shane asks, peering up from his book.

“I would like to do something,” Ilya begins, a bit hesitant, a bit mischievous, “for the kids. Christmas present. But, not without your permission.”

“Okay…”

“Suzanne texted,” he states.

“Suzanne—?”

“Suzanne from hospital, Suzanne. Therapy dog lady.”

“Ah.” Yes, that was her name. “Wait, you have her number?”

“Yes, yes, we text, we are friends,” he says dismissively. He continues, leaving no time for Shane to contemplate how exactly that friendship came to be. “Look. Philippe has been a naughty dog.” He passes his phone over to Shane.

It’s a photo of a litter of puppies.

No – it’s a photo of a litter of the absolutely most adorable puppies he’s ever seen in his life. Pixar movie cute. Huge eyes, floppy ears, fluffy beyond belief. Six of them, husky and something else, it seems, different shades of brown and black and grey.

Shane crinkles his nose, a reflex. “You want to get the kids a puppy.”

“Ugh, Hollander, you are the only person in the world who can look at this picture and not immediately want to adopt all of these precious babies.”

“I don’t know, it just seems like a lot of responsibility.”

“We have two human children.”

“Maybe we can get a cat,” Shane suggests. “Or a tortoise.”

“Not with the tortoise again,” Ilya groans.

“Again?”

“Mm-hm, yes, we’ve talked about pets before. I know all about childhood tortoise Shelley—”

“Shelby.”

“—yes, Shelley, your boring tortoise who was hibernating half the year—”

“Brumating. They brumate.”

“—and who nearly gave you salmonella.”

“That never happened.”

“Yuna says it happened.” Ilya sets his phone in his lap, looks at Shane with a glint in his eye. “Shane, you have met our children. You have met me. I think you need to accept that you are in a family of dog people, not tortoise people.”

Shane thinks, for a moment, about the way Lidiya had greeted Philippe like her oldest and dearest friend, enveloping him in an immediate, unquestioning hug from the very first time they met. And how Niko had committed himself to learning hand signals and French commands from Suzanne, grinning in triumph when Philippe responded by sitting, rolling over, or offering a paw.

He thinks of how Ilya spoke to Philippe as if he were human, including the dog in the day’s conversation. “What do you think of this, Philippe?” How he laughed unguardedly when Philippe slobbered kisses on his face, every time.

Yeah, it’s worth tolerating a dog if it makes them happy. If it makes him happy.

“Fuck,” Shane concedes. He rolls his eyes as a smug smile spreads on Ilya’s face. “Fine. Let’s get a puppy.”

---------------

The puppies are in Laval, just under three hours away in traffic. Shane’s parents take on school pick-up duty so the two can make the road trip.

They cross into Quebec and pass through Gatineau listening to Christmas music on the radio. As they merge onto the A-50, the landscape softening from dense, grey streets to snow-covered farmland, Ilya hums along to “Silver Bells,” entirely out of tune, bobbing his head to the beat like it’s EDM.

They don’t say anything for a while. It’s not an awkward silence, but it’s not totally companionable. Things feel anticipatory – unsaid.

“I am thinking,” Ilya starts, testing the waters, “we stop in Montreal and have lunch with your Pikes.”

“Oh.” Shane feels the oncoming shadow of panic dancing at the edges of his breath. “I don’t know, Ilya.”

“You have been avoiding this.”

“I mean, kind of, yeah. I don’t, like, remember being friends with him.”

“Best friends. He is your best friend, Shane.”

“Right now, you’re my best friend.”

Ilya tilts his head at that, and Shane wonders if he’s hurt by the platonic implications. “I am flattered,” Ilya says finally. “But this will not do. You need to talk to him.”

There were pages in Ilya’s composition notebook about Hayden Pike – about his wife (apparently, it was Shane who set them up); about his kids; about a wedding with plastic rings; about Hayden’s steadfast support in a tense and hateful locker room. About a best man speech that, apparently, had moved multiple six-foot MLH players to tears.

Shane remembers his teammate, sure. He was nice enough. Good enough at hockey (to Ilya’s vehement disagreement). They hit it off alright. But their best-friendship hadn’t blossomed yet, where his memories leave off, and all of these moments from the notebook are foreign to him. This is someone Shane should feel grateful to, and instead, he feels guilty.

Fuck it.

“You’re right,” Shane says finally, reluctantly.

“I am?”

“Take the win.”

“I knew I would win. I already told him we’re coming.”

---------------

There is a Christmas tree glittering in the Pikes’ front window. Ilya knocks on the door.

“It’s about damn time.” A woman immediately folds Shane into a warm hug before he can even really look at her. “Thank god you’re alive.”

Shane hugs back cautiously. “Hi, um, Jackie. Merry Christmas.”

“This must be so weird for you, huh,” she wonders, pulling away. She has a kind smile. She’s wearing an oversized cardigan. “You don’t remember me at all?”

Shane shakes his head, regretful, frustrated, for the thousandth time since this ordeal began. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright, eh? We’ll just start fresh. Come on in.” She opens the door and beckons them inside, hugging Ilya swiftly as he passes.

Shane slips off his one shoe, out of habit.

Hayden is tossing a salad in the kitchen. He is wearing thick-rimmed glasses; those are new. He looks up happily as they enter and sets down his tongs, crossing the room quickly and grabbing Shane by the shoulder. “Thank fuck,” he says, and pulls Shane into a firm hug, as if he’s testing that Shane is real and not a hologram. “Ilya’s been texting me updates, of course, but I’ve had this picture in my head the whole time of you with, like, your head sliced open on the operating table. You scared the shit out of us.”

“Sorry,” Shane says again.

“No, man, you don’t get to be sorry. Giraud is the one who has to be sorry for the rest of his fucking life. He’ll be paying fines to DPS until he drops dead.”

And Shane realizes that, actually, this whole time, no one has told him exactly, beat for beat, what happened on the ice.

“You were there,” Shane remarks. He remembers something – a hand grabbing his, through the fireworks behind his eyes, through the pain.

“I was in the press booth.” Hayden sighs, shaking his head. “It was brutal.” There’s a quiver to his voice, and Shane realizes, this man cares, maybe too much. This has traumatized him.

Suddenly, Shane feels very eager to lighten the mood. “Ilya says you have, like, a whole forward line of kids now.”

Hayden brightens. “Let’s eat, man. Were you on that weird diet yet, in 2010? I couldn’t remember. I made salad just in case.”

Over kale salad and slices of warmed sourdough, Hayden and Jackie tell him about their family. The twins are eighteen – Ilya scoffs at this in mock disbelief – Ruby, some sort of math whiz off to McGill after Cégep; Jade, likely to be drafted into the WMLH. “We’re hoping for the Tempêtes, you know, so she stays close. But if she ends up a top draft pick she’ll likely be stateside. Which is, you know, great, obviously, but also a bummer.”

Then there’s Arthur, in grade eleven, studious and shy, yet uncovering a passion for theatre. “Real theatre, like Shakespeare,” Hayden marvels. “He memorizes these monologues like it’s nothing.”

And lastly, Amber, fourteen, who figure skates, draws comic strips, and makes music on an antique accordion. “She’s a creative soul,” Jackie opines. “She tells us she’s ‘alt.’”

“They miss your weird meme emails,” Hayden tells Shane.

Shane looks to Ilya for guidance. “I don’t know what that means.”

“He means,” Ilya says grumpily, “that you are grandpa who does not have social media, and so whenever you see something funny on the internet that the Pike children would like, you email them a whole URL link like Egyptian prince.”

“I’m going to need you to clarify that one.”

“You know—like Rosetta Stone. The symbols.”

“Hieroglyphics?”

“Yes, this one.”

Jackie darts her eyes between them. “For someone who didn’t know they were married until two months ago, you’re getting along pretty well,” she muses.

Shane shrugs. “It’s been fine. He’s been—” There’s not a word that seems adequate here. Nice, kind, patient. That’s like, barely the half of it. “It’s been fine,” he repeats.

“We are good,” Ilya agrees through bites of food. “We have a rhythm.”

“Good,” Hayden says. “I’m really glad.” He pauses, clears his throat, almost unconsciously. “Maybe your rhythm can include us, sometimes? Even just, like, text us hello once in a while.”

There it is again, that guilt, tugging at Shane’s throat; but there’s something else, too, something lighter. This has been nice. Hayden is nice. There’s no pressure to remember, just space to move forward. “Yeah. Of course. I can do that.”

“You fucking better.”

---------------

They arrive in Laval after a requisite stop for Fairmount Bagels (four dozen, to stock in the freezer). Six maniacally cute puppies clamor and whine as they step into Suzanne’s cozy home.

“This one is Roxy, that is Snowball, and this one is Zeke,” Suzanne calls out, pointing at each furball that tumbles past.

Shane chuckles to himself and crouches down next to Zeke, offering the back of his hand. Zeke is black with preciously white little paws.

Ilya’s lips quirk, watching as Zeke sniffs, then licks, Shane’s hand. “What’s so funny?”

“If this was our dog – you know, like, ours,” Shane says, gesturing between them, eyes lighting up at the joke he is about to make, “he shouldn’t be named Zeke. He should be called Deke.”

They make the drive home with Deke curled up in Shane’s lap, tongue hanging out of his mouth, entirely asleep, as Shane lavishes pets lovingly on the dog he didn’t want.

Chapter End Notes

1. I'm sorry if the characterization of Hayden is off -- We don't get much of him in the show, and having not read the books, I'm just vibing based off of fics I've read, what a middle-aged version of him might be like.

2. It's TV canon that Rose is team St-Viateur so obviously, Shane is Fairmount. Because they're not compatible :)

Chapter 10: Fireworks

Chapter Notes

An Ilya POV

CW brief mentions of depression and homophobia (Russia)

Ilya is sick and tired of being forgotten.

First was his father, of course. A forgetting that was like volume dimming on a speaker. It was a medical forgetting, predictable, timed. And still, there had been a day in the summer when he’d met his father’s eyes and saw – nothing. No animosity, no disdain. Just a neutral, maybe even friendly glance. And in that moment Ilya knew that his father did not remember who he was.

Masha has forgotten him by now. Maybe not entirely, sure – she knows his name, that he plays hockey, that he was the longtime purveyor of the American candy bars Sveta would bring on her trips. But she will have forgotten him in all the ways that matter – forgotten that he’d held her when she was born, told her whispered stories about her Baba Ira, ran interference on his brother’s misplaced anger until, finally, he’d gone overseas and stayed, for good, because her preservation was important, yes, but so too was his.

(He thinks about her, often.)

Russia has forgotten him. He had been on billboards, when he was a prospect; he had carried that flag, cursed as it was, through an Olympic stadium. And then one day, a curt statement from Minsport about homosexual propaganda, and like that, he faded from the collective memories of his countrymen.

Boston, eventually, forgot him, too. There’s no number eighty-one in the rafters. No more Rozanov jerseys in the merch shop. Fans who once cheered for him, then later booed for him, eventually stopped thinking about him at all.

Yes, Ilya has been forgotten many times before. He’s not worried. He knows his legacy –

A legacy that lives in a cardboard box, high on a shelf—

In a foundation that bears his mother’s name, like a guardian angel—

In a locker room in Ottawa, where he once carved their initials into the wood of his stall, IR ♡ SH, like schoolchildren from another century—

In two sets of dark brown eyes, two small freckled faces that look at him with a selfless, unhindered love that he works every day to deserve. To protect.

The doctors speak to him in a hushed, rational tone, and he understands. He knows what to expect. But still, when he walks through the door and is met by a sharp intake of breath, he reels.

“What the fuck are you doing? You can’t be here.”

And he thinks, this is different from the other times. This is not a dimming, a fade-to-black.

This is a fire being snuffed out, leaving nothing but ash.

---------------

Ice has memory. Ice wears its memory like scars. Paths travelled, hesitations and halting stops. A throw, a harsh fall. Then the scrabbling, scraping scuff marks of pulling yourself back up, finding your balance, and pushing off again.

---------------

The notebook wasn’t for Shane, originally. It was for him.

The realization was sharp and frantic. There were years of their lives, formative years when the only language they spoke was the closeness of their bodies, when he knew that he loved, agonizingly, ferociously, but held the words in his throat like a fire eater until he thought he might combust – years when he would look over at the man beside him, his freckles, his eyelashes, his lips, the flush on his face, and wish he could take a picture.

There were no pictures from the cottage, no pictures of a glowing firepit or sunlight glinting on the lake. No pictures on the sofa at the Hollanders’ house in those early, tentative months of their knowing, Shane’s head in his lap, sleepily watching a game while David and Yuna sorted the edge pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The pictures they have together from that time, press conferences, commercial shoots, All-Star games – there was always space between them. Secrets lived in that space. Plausible deniability lived in that space. Under the table, shoes found each other, reassuring, trusting, closing the space in silent, unseen microcosms of intimacy that cameras would never capture.

And it had been okay that there were no pictures, because they remembered those moments, the two of them, and that was enough. Until it wasn’t.

Because now he is the sole vessel of those moments. And maybe it’s only temporary, medical; or maybe it’s permanent, an abyss; but it doesn’t matter, not really, because now – right now – he holds these alone, and he’s terrified of that. Of genetics, of a father’s vacant glance; of planes that fall from the sky; of the daily probabilities and improbabilities that make people back up their hard drives or give neighbours their spare key. Anything could happen, and if anything happens before he can tell the story of those days – sunlit mornings in his arms, nights spent planning, dreaming, an “I love you too” uttered like the most achingly beautiful aria – if those days were to disappear with him just as they have with Shane, he would not forgive himself.

So, he begins to write.

He fills one notebook, and then another, and then he goes to Costco and buys a whole pack of them. His son, who understands what is happening in a way that makes Ilya’s heart burn, asks if he can have one of the notebooks from the stack in the study, so he can write stories for Dad, too. “So I can help,” he says plainly, “with the reminding.”

At the hospital, he reads to Shane from the notebooks, these wending, convoluted timelines. Everything about them had been out of order, hadn’t it? Sex before love before MLH shitshow. Around their love, the earth had continued to turn. Elections, conflicts, zeitgeists. A humid summer in 2015 when pride flags waved from balconies and couples lined up at Boston City Hall, and love was so loud in the streets that the silence he’d carried for so long felt deafening by comparison.

He reads to Shane, and he jokes and banters and reassures, and at night, he writes. Eventually he starts to type on his laptop because his hand aches from hours gripping the pen. And it’s incomprehensible and only half in English and it’s raw and jagged and incomplete. But at a certain point, he thinks, it might also be important.

He texts Yuna one night, from the hospital, laptop balanced on his knees. He feels embarrassed to ask this, nervous, but also resolved.

Can you recommend literary agent?

She texts back quickly. Of course she does.

I’ll email you a list.

---------------

He watches Shane wear fatherhood. It fits him well, but not like a glove. More like a sweater from a thrift store – it hugs his shape, it suits him, but it had a life before him, when it belonged to someone else.

This Shane, 2010 Shane, loves his children in different, small ways than the Shane he once grew into fatherhood with. Waffles have smiley faces now; it’s a display, Ilya thinks, like Shane is trying to prove, as visibly and tangibly as he can, that he is following the steps, playing the part. Doing what he thinks he is supposed to be doing.

All done lovingly, of course. So lovingly his heart could burst. That’s the beautiful, awful thing. The fierceness that Shane loves his family with, it’s not gone. It still burns brightly. It’s just, changed shape.

It’s the nicknames, Ilya realizes, or rather, the absence of them. “Time for bed, K.B.,” his old Shane would say, scooping Lidiya up from the sofa to carry her upstairs. (K.B. for Koala Bear, because she would cling to his neck in that way, so trusting in his arms.) “Did you brush your teeth, Carrot Sticks?” his old Shane would holler across the hallway, and Niko would sheepishly dart into the washroom to complete the task he thought he had evaded. (Downstairs, a refrigerator hummed, filled with carrot sticks from the week’s grocery shop, a supply which would be decimated before the weekend.) And Ilya knows he could just tell Shane, “Call her K.B. Call him Carrot Sticks. It’s what you usually do,” and Shane would do it because he so desperately wants to be usual, but it wouldn’t be the same.

It wouldn’t carry the memory of a thousand bedtimes.

---------------

He is okay in the ways that he knows are most fundamentally important. His children are healthy and safe. His husband is alive – and that is no small thing. Their home grows warmer, even as winter deepens; routine wraps around them like a quilt, a patchwork of actions taken wordlessly, relentlessly, until they feel worn and soft and lived-in.

He ups his therapy to twice a week. He hydrates. He takes his meds and gets his eight hours and eats three square meals.

He doesn’t feel the quicksand, the impossible downward pull of gravity that once crushed his ribs and choked at his throat so that getting out of bed was a herculean task. That was a sadness that lived in a diagnostic manual and a prescription pad, a weight that he knows he still carries, but now he has a cart to wheel it around in.

No, this sadness is different. It aches. It’s grief, really. But, he knows it’s survivable. And that’s important.

Deke helps, with his tiny white sockfeet and his floppy ears, this wriggling, impossibly soft thing that he holds close, letting the buzzing energy of his feelings become muted, for just a moment, as his hand tangles in fur.

(Ilya makes a mental note to donate to a therapy dog organization.)

Over the winter holidays, they take Deke for walks in the snow as a family – short, physical therapist-approved walks – and it gives them something to work toward – heel, sit, stay – little milestones that they can achieve, together, the kids laughing brightly at every adorable failure and every hard-won success.

On New Year’s Eve they light a fire in the fireplace and watch some concert that’s being broadcast on TV, and Lidiya and Niko and Deke are curled up between them on the sofa, having failed in their mission to stay awake until midnight. Shane absently brushes the curls from Niko’s face and traces his thumb in small circles on Niko’s shoulder. A clock counts down on the screen, and partyers in Toronto disappear into a cloud of glittering confetti, and Ilya looks to Shane and thinks, It’s 2032.

Since a day out west, in the cold, in the snow. A cigarette. He has loved this man for twice as long, exactly, as he knew his mother.

Gently, and without needing to be told, Shane gathers Niko into his arms while Ilya collects their daughter. Deke stirs, blinking awake with a small, yipping yawn, and follows them upstairs.

The kids tucked in soundly, they meet in the hallway, nodding in silent acknowledgement, and move to the bedroom. It’s a cold night; Shane bundles on a sweatshirt while Ilya lays out an extra blanket.

Since this all started, Ilya has cherished the small affections he can offer, passing touches he knows Shane has grown familiar with over these months, even if he does not reciprocate. A kiss on the cheek, on the temple; a squeeze of the hand; being held, at night; a steadying palm on his shoulder, his forearm, the small of his back.

But tonight, Shane looks at him from across the bed, something resolved and hopeful in his eyes. He crosses the room and takes Ilya's face carefully in his hands, and kisses him. And, oh, it's a 2010 kiss. Hushed, secretive, precious.

Outside, he hears fireworks. Neighbourhood kids. Red and yellow shadows dance through the window, fiery bright.

A thumb brushes a tear from his cheek. A whisper: “Happy New Year, Ilya.”

Chapter 11: Déjà Vu

OTTAWA

JANUARY 2032

“We have to talk about the cello thing.”

They’re in bed; Shane sets his book down on his stomach, takes off his glasses. “Yeah. Okay.”

Shane still feels surprised, a little, when Ilya includes him in parenting decisions. He wants to say, Don’t you know I’m not qualified for this? But he’s also grateful. These decisions, made together, feel like some of the most important he’s ever made in his incomplete and unremembered life.

And so, here it is: Lidiya is good at the cello. Like, really fucking good.

They had an inkling she might be better than average, at least, when she brought the thing home to practice, and she sounded actually tuneful and competent and distinctly not like a wounded goose, which is what they had expected from a five-year-old who had been handed a musical instrument less than a week prior.

But then, in the new year, after a holiday break of self-motivated cello practice, gentle renditions of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” pouring from behind the door of her room, she came home from school with a letter.

The letter threw around words like perfect pitch and prodigious aptitude. It recommended moving Lidiya into the middle school orchestra and signing her up with a private cello instructor. It stated, plainly, that the introductory-level Suzuki class was below her level of ability, and advised that she should not return.

And now, there are a few problems before them.

For one, Lidiya does not want to leave Suzuki class. Her friends are in the class. She really likes the teacher. The class has good snacks.

But then there’s the bigger thing, that’s harder to name, but something they both feel looming. A shared history – local ice rinks that were too small to contain their talent; skills that grew faster than the other kids’, an exponential progression that had their parents, a stern Russian, a pair of sweet Canadians, no longer thinking in terms of practice schedules and skate sizes, but in terms of potential, and a career, and a calling.

Ilya knows he would choose it all over again, if he had to go back to the start. Look at what it’s led to, after all. But he’s not sure they should choose it for their daughter.

“I don’t think she should change classes,” Ilya confesses.

Shane exhales. “I don’t, either.”

“No?”

He shakes his head. “She’s five. What’s she going to do in a class with kids twice her age? She’ll be so lonely.” Lonely as he had been, once, a middle-schooler among U18s.

“Good. Yes. This is what I was thinking.” Ilya is relieved at their agreement. He’d thought, maybe, Shane – 2010 Shane, ambitious, driven, optimistic – would see the situation differently.

But then Shane leans forward, opens his mouth to say something, hesitates. Tries again. “I think—and I mean, we should ask her first, what she wants—but I think the private teacher could be good.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, she clearly likes it. She practices all the time. She can stay in the class with her friends, and also pursue it, you know, outside of that. If she wants to.”

Ilya knows his daughter, knows her interiority, the way she considers complex things with a wisdom beyond her years. “You are right. We will ask her.”

“Okay.” Shane nods to himself, picking up his book. “Okay. Good.”

Shane reads in silence for a while; Ilya rests his eyes, listening to the rustle of pages, the soft, familiar breathing. When Shane turns off the bedside lamp, they settle into the sheets and find the shape of each other, as they have been, most nights.

Ilya rakes his index finger across Shane’s palm in listless lines. They face each other, legs touching.

“Where do you think she gets it from?” Shane asks quietly. “You’re not musical. I’m not musical – I mean, I did the violin thing as a toddler, but I sucked. No one in my family is musical.”

“Mm, is from my mother,” Ilya says, without thinking.

It’s not possible, of course, genetically speaking. Ilya almost feels embarrassed to have said it. He forgets, sometimes, that these children who are so completely his in every possible sense, lack this one thing that could connect them to her, a grandmother they’ll never meet.

“She was a musician? Your mother?”

Ilya nods into the pillow, nestles his head against Shane’s neck. “She studied to be opera singer, when she was young,” he murmurs. “She had such a beautiful voice. Always she was singing. Doing laundry, cooking—always she was singing.”

(Always, except when she was sad. Except when the songs disappeared into periods of languid, distant silence.)

Shane kisses the side of his head. He’s been more comfortable, lately, expressing these affections. Ilya sighs into Shane’s shoulder.

“She would have loved them. Like we love them.”

Shane tenses in his arms, inhaling sharply. Ilya loosens their embrace, pulls away slowly. “What is it? What is wrong?”

“Nothing—no, I—” Shane grabs Ilya’s hand, under the covers. “Sorry. I just got a weird feeling all of a sudden. Like, déjà vu, or something.”

And Ilya doesn’t dare to hope, because that is much too dangerous a task. But he wonders, as he slips into dreams, Shane in his arms, if it wasn’t déjà vu, but a memory.

Of a cottage by a lake. Of a summer that changed them.

---------------

It’s not like in the movies. It’s not a flashback or a sudden realization. It’s just, scraps of something without context, a feeling that something he knows about the world doesn’t quite make sense.

Just as he knew about the strawberries, it dawns on Shane one morning that he knows something else unexplained.

“Ilya, who is Gleb?”

“What is this about Gleb?”

“I don’t know,” Shane says. “I just—I think I might remember something. About Gleb.”

A slow, laughing smile spreads on Ilya’s face. “I wanted to name our son this.”

“You wanted to name our son Gleb?”

“Yes of course. Is very good Slavic name. Very noble. A saint’s name.”

Shane scoffs. “It’s kind of a ridiculous name.”

“Yes, this is exactly what you said at the time.”

“It doesn’t even sound like a name. More like a sound effect.”

Ilya throws up his hands. “We did not name him Gleb! It is over now! You can relax.”

Shane laughs, a little smug, tamping down another feeling, the jealousy-grief that rises in his chest. Ilya remembers naming their son. Remembers hushed conversations late at night, testing names on their tongues like fine wines, in awe of the importance of the task. Remembers holding a small, red baby when he was born, and looking down and proclaiming him Niko, with a certainty that would settle in both their hearts like snowfall.

All Shane remembers, is a wrong name.

---------------

Shane was small, maybe Lidiya’s age, maybe smaller, toque snug on his head, bundled warm in a sweater knit by a grandma who has since passed. His dad tied his skates, nice and tight, left foot then right. “There you go, champ,” he said, tapping each toe with his fist.

It was his dad who first taught him to skate, who held his hands on the Rideau Canal and propelled him gently forward. He’d felt so secure with his dad’s steady hands over his, guiding him, until the moment came to let go and glide forward, on his own.

Ilya skates up to the picnic table and lands on the bench beside him, two hot chocolates in hand. Steam rises into the cold air. He hands a cup to Shane, who lets it sit between his gloved palms, relishing the warmth.

They watch their children skate.

It’s a feeling Shane can’t quite name. He’s been to many hockey practices by now, U6s and U9s in Tim Hortons jerseys, and a speed skating class where Niko is still learning to hit his stride. And every time, he laces and knots their skates tightly, left then right, and taps each toe with his fist, and it’s such a miraculous thing to do this, to pass this memory on to them, and to watch them live with such a natural, facile joy in this same world that raised him.

The air smells like pine trees and Beaver Tails. The skateway isn’t too crowded today, but it’s still busy, loud with laughter and blades scraping ice. Passing skaters double-take, whispering, “Isn’t that—?”

They ignore them.

“Do you remember? Learning to skate?”

“My mother taught me,” Ilya says. “My brother, too, a little bit.”

“You don’t talk about your brother.”

“Mm, no. He is not a good man.” Ilya sips from his cup and exhales, breath clouding the air. “But when we were small, it was different. It was like this.” He raises his cup toward the ice, where Niko and Lidiya skate circles around one another, chirping, racing.

Shane leans into Ilya’s side. His right foot finds Ilya’s left, the side of his shoe tapping Ilya’s skate, gently. And Ilya could melt from it, from the sense-memory of this small, unconscious touch. He stretches an arm behind them and pulls Shane closer. They watch their children soar.

Chapter 12: Poutine

Chapter Notes

OTTAWA

FEBRUARY 2032

The orthopaedist clears Shane for weight-bearing movement. Fucking finally.

Claire and Tomasz high-five him as he walks into the clinic without his boot. There’s still work to do, and a while before he can be back on the ice. But this is good progress. Very good.

“What are you going to do to celebrate?” Tomasz asks, passing him a pair of resistance bands.

“I don’t know,” Shane says. “I hadn’t thought about it. Probably walk our dog and take a shower standing up?”

But at home, Ilya has other ideas. “We celebrate tonight. I am taking you out.”

“Out?”

“Yes. On a date.”

“Oh.” Shane feels a flush rush to his face. “We haven’t done that, before.”

“Are you nervous? Don’t be. We will have fun. I am a very fun guy. This is lucky, because you are so boring.”

“Shut up.”

“You don’t want to go?”

“No, I—I want to go—”

“This is settled then! Your parents are coming at six to watch the kids.” Ilya looks Shane up and down, laughter playing at his eyes. “Wear something nicer than this. And bring layers.”

---------------

The entire afternoon, Shane’s skin buzzes anxiously. With his newfound mobility, he paces, tidying the counters, vacuuming dog hair from just about every surface. He feels like he’s just been asked to prom by the coolest boy in school, not like a grown man whose husband wants to take him out to dinner. Geez, Hollander, get a grip.

Ilya is out coaching the kids’ hockey; the house is quiet. Deke gnaws on a chew toy, periodic squeaks piercing the silence, and Shane thinks back to the heart monitor at the hospital.

He stands in the closet, completely at a loss. He’s been living in flannel and sweatpants for the past months. He doesn’t recognize anything on the hangers. He doesn’t know his own sense of style or taste. It’s infuriating.

He inspects a pair of jeans; the denim is soft, worn-in. That’s a start. He finds a sweater that seems nice, dark blue and cable-knit. There’s a green sweater, too – is he a blue person, or a green person? And layers; Ilya said layers. He finds a jacket, black, sort of structured. He lays his choices out on the bed and immediately second-guesses them, trading the blue sweater for the green.

He showers, shampooing twice. Steps back into the bedroom and puts on the blue sweater, after all.

He usually avoids the mirror. He’s seen himself, this same-but-different reflection, the salt-and-pepper hair, the hardened shape of his face. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just – at odds. He can close his eyes and picture his reflection; but when he opens them, there stands someone else.

But today, he looks. Checks the sweater for dog fur and wrinkles. Unrumples the pockets of the jeans. Not so long ago, it feels, he stood in front of a mirror, in a suit and tie, in a hotel room in Toronto, feeling the exact same gravity and apprehension pounding in his chest.

He heads downstairs and starts plating some post-practice snacks. They’ll be home any minute. Carrot sticks and peanut butter for Niko, an inexplicable combination that Shane has learned not to question; apple slices and string cheese for Lidiya. He likes feeling useful like this, like he can contribute to their routine, someone they can rely on.

The front door opens and there are familiar sounds, equipment bags thudding to the ground, coats being shed. Their Russian conversation, lively and quick, eases into English as they come into the kitchen.

“Dad! Your boot’s gone,” Lidiya observes immediately.

“Does this mean you can skate again?” Niko asks, shoveling a carrot stick into his mouth.

“No, not yet. Soon, I hope.”

Ilya stands at the threshold of the kitchen, looking at him seriously. His eyes scan Shane with an intensity he can’t quite place. He wonders, suddenly, if he should have chosen the green sweater.

“Is it okay?” he asks softly. He knows his ears are turning red, feeling heat rush to his head.

“It’s very good,” Ilya says, a small, honest smile reaching his eyes. “You look like you.”

Niko clears his throat from the table behind them. “Dad, Papa, can I say my thing now?” he calls loudly.

“Ah,” Ilya says, raising his eyebrows at Shane. “That’s right. Niko says he has an announcement.” They join the kids at the table.

“Okay,” Niko begins. “I would like to retire from hockey.”

Shane and Ilya look at each other; a smile tugs at the corners of Ilya’s lips. “Retire?” he repeats. “You cannot retire. You are eight.”

Niko nods seriously. “I want to do speed skating only,” he states. “I like it better. I like racing. It’s fun. I’m not very good at it yet, but I want to do it more so I can get better.”

Lidiya sets down her string cheese, looking betrayed. “But then I have to do hockey alone.”

“No,” Niko counters, “you have Bridget and Ashley and Kamal and everyone else on your team.”

Fair point being made, Lidiya resumes her snacking, squinting at her brother suspiciously.

“You are sure?” Ilya asks gently.

“Yeah,” says Niko. “I’m sorry. I know you want us to be hockey players.”

“No, we don’t,” Shane rushes to say, then hesitates, looking to Ilya.

He nods. “This is right. We just want you to do what makes you happy.”

“So it’s okay?” Niko asks, bravado gone. Just a kid wanting to make his parents proud.

“Of course,” Ilya says. “Yes. Of course it’s okay.”

Shane picks up the empty snack plates and brings them to the sink. Ilya follows, brushing a hand over Shane’s shoulder. He leans close and says quietly, conspiratorially, “I think our son just came out to us as a speed skater.”

---------------

Ilya comes downstairs adjusting the sleeves of his leather jacket, his hair combed back, still damp from the shower, and yeah, the man is hot. Shane’s heart does something in his chest.

His parents knock even though they have a key. Shane opens the door and hugs them as they enter.

“You look well,” his dad observes, nodding.

“You’re out of the boot,” his mom notes with a smile. “It’s about time.” Her arms are full with a tote bag of board games, dog treats, and tupperwares of dessert.

Ilya kisses them each on the cheek, grinning. “Thank you, Yuna. Thank you, David.”

“Where are you boys off to?” his dad asks.

“He won’t tell me,” Shane complains.

“Make sure Kolya brushes his teeth,” Ilya instructs as he slips into his shoes. “He will tell you he did, but he is a liar who lies.”

“Will do,” his mom assures.

“Don’t worry,” Ilya jokes, smiling wide, “I’ll have him back before curfew.”

The drive isn’t long, but Shane feels every minute of it. He glances back and forth from the clock on the dashboard to Ilya’s profile in the dark of the car. “You really won’t tell me where we’re going?”

Ilya flashes a grin. “What, don’t you trust me?”

That’s the thing. Shane does.

They park on the street in Centretown and Ilya brings an arm to Shane’s shoulder, ushering him to the sidewalk. “Here we are.”

It’s a small corner spot, dimly lit in sepia tones from warm, old-fashioned bulbs. They’re greeted by smells of frying grease and salt. “Most of the time you were in Montreal, you were on a performance diet,” Ilya says carefully.

“Yeah, I started during pre-season. In September. It was my trainer’s idea.” He’d only been on it for a month before the accident, before waking up in the future. And honestly, it had sucked.

“You lived half your adult life in Montreal,” Ilya tells him, with a sly grin, “and not once did you eat poutine. This is very un-Canadian of you.”

Shane breathes a laugh as they slide into a booth, worn red leather. “You took me to a poutine place.”

“I did. It’s okay?”

Shane nods. “It’s okay.”

“Good.” Ilya turns to the waitress as she approaches; if she recognizes them, she doesn’t say anything. “One ginger ale, one Coke, two poutine, extra cheese, please,” he orders.

Shane can admit when he’s wrong about something. The poutine is delicious.

Ilya steals a fry from his plate.

“Eat your own,” Shane scolds.

Ilya looks at him, something gentle on his face. “We did not know each other very well, in 2010.”

Shane takes a bite, avoiding his gaze. “No, we didn’t.”

“I regret this. Not knowing you better, when we were young.” Ilya is choosing his words carefully; his voice is low, but not hesitant. “I am glad I get to know you now. As you are.”

And that’s – well, that is something. Shane looks up now. This whole time, he has felt – wrong. Like the wrong person woke up in that hospital bed. Like no amount of playacting parenthood and studying from a notebook can change the fact that he’s not who he’s supposed to be.

Ilya meets his gaze with these questioning eyes, and Shane doesn’t know what to say. So he reaches across the table, and takes a fry from Ilya’s plate.

“Hey!” he objects.

Shane shrugs, a smile finally breaking on his face. “It’s only fair.”

---------------

Their next stop becomes apparent as the arena looms closer.

“What are we doing here?” Shane asks.

Ilya pulls into the rear parking lot, close to the players’ entrance. “You’ll see.”

“I don’t think we’re allowed to be here. It’s obviously closed.”

“Trust, Shane,” he chides. “Trust.”

They stand outside the double doors, and Ilya pulls out his phone, texting rapidly. Their breaths form clouds in the cold air as they wait.

There’s the sound of keys jangling behind the door, which swings open suddenly. “Roz,” a man greets. “You’re late.”

Ilya dismisses this with a wave. “Please. Was like five minutes.”

“It was ten.” The man turns to Shane, nods a curt greeting. “Hollander.”

“Hi,” says Shane. He does not know this man.

Ilya gestures at the man. “I am sorry we were late, Ben. May we come in?”

Ben steps aside, holding the door open, and Shane follows Ilya into a vaguely familiar hallway. He’d played against Ottawa once in pre-season and one away game, before the black hole of his memory.

“We’re definitely not supposed to be here,” Shane repeats. The fluorescent lights are off; dim emergency lights guide their way. Ben is gruff, silent, leading them through a winding passageway until, he realizes, they’re at the home team’s tunnel.

“Relax,” Ilya says, something gleeful in his voice. “I bribed the right people. Don’t worry.”

They step through the tunnel and arrive at a Zamboni. Ben climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the engine.

“Care to explain, finally?” Shane looks at Ilya, eyebrows raised.

“Every day you are telling me, ‘I want to get back on the ice.’ Every day you say this. But, your leg is fucked.” He grins, clearly pleased with himself. “So. This is next best thing. Until we have you skating again.”

There’s a backwards-facing seat next to Ben’s, clearly meant for one person, but Ilya climbs up and holds a hand out to Shane, and pulls him up beside him, pressed close together, almost in his lap.

“This is—” Shane looks at Ilya, their faces close, searching for the right word. Sweet. Thoughtful. Ridiculous. Absolutely not sanctioned by management. He changes course. “Thanks,” he says softly, and means it.

Ben drives them onto the ice, and the lights are dim, the upper tiers of seating fading into shadow. The Jumbotron looms dark above them. Shane loves an empty arena. He loves – loved? – being the last one out after practice, feeling swallowed by the cavernous ceiling, the silence of the chill air. It has always felt like hallowed ground, the ice, ever since he was a kid. What an honour it is, to play hockey.

Fuck, does he miss it.

Ilya watches him as they circle the ice; Shane can feel his eyes on him, even as he looks around, anywhere but meeting Ilya’s gaze. Finally, he rests his head on Ilya’s shoulder and looks out into the shadows.

On their way out, Ilya shakes Ben’s hand, and Shane is fairly certain he sees a wad of cash exchanged.

“Wait, you really bribed him? I thought you were kidding.” They step out into the parking lot; snow has started to fall, soft and slow.

“Was not bribe. Was tip.”

“Whatever you say.” Shane stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets, looking down. Now he really feels like he’s in high school, a tangle of nerves and bravery catching in his throat. Screw it. He leans forward and kisses Ilya quickly. Not like on New Year’s – this time shyer, quieter. Grateful.

Ilya laughs, and his laughter takes shape in the cold. Snowflakes land on his hair, his eyelashes. “Was good first date, then?”

“Yes. It was.”

“See, I told you I am very fun.” Ilya takes his hand and they walk to the car. He opens the passenger door for Shane, still holding his hand. “Я тебя люблю,” he says softly, automatically, like he can’t help but say it.

Shane has heard this before from Ilya, whispered in the dark of their bedroom when he thinks Shane is already asleep; has surmised what it means, has practiced saying it in the silent house during hockey practice, using an app on his phone. He freezes, lets go of Ilya’s hand.

“Sorry,” Ilya says quickly. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“No, it’s—” Shane shifts on his feet, looking at the powdery layer of white forming beneath them. His heartbeat races behind his ears. “The thing is, I actually do. I do.” He can't bring himself to say the rest of the words. He looks past Ilya’s shoulder, at the arena, trying not to read into Ilya’s small, hopeful breath. “I just. I’m scared it’s not enough.”

“It is enough,” Ilya says. He closes the distance between them, at last finding Shane’s eyes. “With you, always, it is enough.”

Chapter End Notes

Thank you everyone for reading, I am trying to answer some comments! I'm really grateful for the support and am enjoying this process so much.

Just to share how this is coming together, I've written a lot of separate scenes that I knew from the start I wanted to include, so now it's a matter of stringing everything together into a logical order and making connections between everything. I have the ending already so I'm basically writing backwards to get us there. Thanks for sticking around. I love our boys so much and this is the most motivated I've felt to write and be creative in years so personally it just means a lot to share this with you all who are enjoying it :)

Chapter 13: List

Chapter Notes

Yuna POV

CW reference to homophobia

LANAUDIÈRE

MARCH 2032

To Yuna’s surprise, it is Shane who calls a business meeting.

She had more or less stepped back from managing Shane’s career, and Ilya’s for that matter, when the kids were born. They already had an established brand and a ride-or-die agent; by the time Niko came around, what they needed most from her, was to be a grandma.

Her boys were on the road a lot in those early years of parenthood. She watched it rip out their hearts, saying goodbye to Niko, who was learning to wave with his small, perfect hands. They would facetime every spare moment from Seattle or Pittsburgh or Edmonton. They would bring home airport souvenirs – a stuffed alligator from Florida; from Vancouver, an orca. To this day, Niko’s bookshelf is crowded with an entire zoo, proof of being thought of from faraway by the two people who love him most.

She and David would take Niko to home games, of course, and games in Montreal, sometimes even Toronto or Buffalo. Niko was great on long drives, easily lulled to sleep by the hum of the tires on the road. Shane had been like that, too, as a baby. How strange and wonderful, the things that are passed down.

Shane, like her, was built to compartmentalize. He loved being a father; he loved hockey. These weren’t at odds; they were every bit a part of him. But for Ilya, the distance was clarifying. He loved hockey, yes; but he loved being a father more. And so, at another business meeting in 2025, they sat around the same table where her boys had once confessed to being together since their rookie year – no, summer before – and agreed that Ilya would retire at the end of the season, hopefully with his first and only Olympic medal, and – they revealed, with a quiet, awed pride – just in time to greet a coming little girl.

Ilya’s retirement had been a masterpiece, if she dared say so herself. The City of Ottawa, quite literally, threw him a parade. That was the last time Yuna had been called upon to help in a business sense: crafting a statement, negotiating an exit.

Until a hit, a fall, blood on the ice. Her son needed her. And Yuna delivered.

Shane’s memory loss has been entirely kept out of the news. The injury report ended up citing only the broken bone and concussion. She knew him, knew he wouldn’t want this awful, frightening thing that has torn so much from him made public in a moment that he’s most hurt and scared and vulnerable. The leg alone will keep him on LTIR for the season, and she’s holding out hope that the other thing, the much more tenuous and uncertain thing, will heal just like a broken bone, a slow return of memory and self grafting over this cruel, jagged fracture.

It’s a strange heartbreak, one that’s held afloat by gratitude. There had been a moment where it seemed possible that her son might not survive. That word – stroke – so laden; she sat in the hospital, stricken, panicked, David’s hand over hers, thinking about her father.

Yet here is Shane, her Shane – entirely alive, entirely himself, diving head-first into an unfamiliar life with the same precision and passion and fearlessness that she’s watched in him every day since he first picked up a hockey stick.

She sits across from him now. There’s an early spring thaw, and they’ve driven out to the family cottage for the weekend. Ilya’s idea; a change of scenery. Niko and Lidiya love Babushka and Dedushka’s cottage almost as much as they love their own parents’ cottage down the road. Peals of laughter tumble into the kitchen from the backyard, where David has engaged his three grandchildren (two human, one canine) in a game of Frisbee.

Same table, same boys. She knows Shane does not remember those earlier conversations around this table; does not remember the way truth settled between them, weighty and amorphous and cathartic. But, she knows, he remembers this table in other ways: summers as a kid, David’s chicken chili, games of Uno and Rummikub. The poison ivy incident. Staying up late, ice cream sundaes.

Ilya sits beside him, looking equally uncertain as her about the purpose of this meeting. Shane is clinging to a composition notebook, fingers hooked over its spine, tense.

After a moment, he inhales, blinks as if to brace himself, and says, “I think I need to retire.”

She and Ilya exchange a cautious glance. “Why do you think this?” Ilya asks gently.

Shane sets the notebook flat on the table and opens it to a dog-eared page. She recognizes the meticulous writing, the grid of boxes which he probably drew with a ruler. This is a Shane list – options weighed, pros and cons, timelines, deadlines. Ever her son; her heart aches at the familiarity of it.

“For one, I am forty years old,” Shane says, with a disbelieving laugh. “I should probably have retired already, honestly.”

Yuna shakes her head. “You have one year left on your contract.”

“I know. Ilya explained it,” he says, consulting his list. “And for the record, I think future-me was absolutely insane for thinking I should play until I’m forty-two.”

Ilya laughs. “I also said this to future-you. But he did not listen.”

Shane softens at this; Yuna has watched him fall into his relationship with Ilya with an ease that makes her wonder, sometimes, if some cloudy memory of their decade of marriage is seeping through the gaps. Ilya teases, Shane defends, but Ilya knows his husband’s exact limits, his sense of humour, what will make him laugh, what will diffuse tension. They are so natural together, even in those early days at the hospital, Ilya to Shane a practical stranger.

How lucky, how grateful she feels, to have this second son.

“The leg is one thing,” Shane says flatly. “I’ll be back on skates next month, maybe even in a couple weeks, but I won’t be fast or strong or, like, functional yet. And at that point it’s playoffs.”

“You’re on injured reserve,” Yuna points out. “You’re not expected to return this season.”

“The other thing,” Shane says slowly, brushing past her point, “the brain thing. Obviously. Is that if I return, they’re not getting a veteran who’s won five cups. They’re getting a rookie.”

“You’re talking about next season, next fall. A lot can change before then,” Yuna says softly. And she knows it’s optimistic, maybe recklessly so, to think of a future where things change for the better. She meets Ilya’s eyes and knows she’s not the only one clinging to this fragile, desperate hope.

“It’s been six months,” Shane says.

“Five,” Ilya corrects. “Five months.”

“It’s been almost six months,” Shane continues. “I think I need to start being realistic here and like, make an actual fucking plan.” His voice rises, angular, panicked. She wants to wrap her arms around him, hold him close, like she used to when he was small, after he’d had a bad nightmare.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I know.” Yuna reaches forward, curls her hand over his where it drums anxiously along the notebook’s edge.

Ilya looks at Shane softly, curiously, head tilted like he’s processing a thought. “Can you explain it to me, why you want this?” he asks.

“You think I’m giving up,” Shane ventures.

Ilya shakes his head, then nods. “I am worried of this, yes.”

“Well, I’m not.” Shane grips the notebook tighter under Yuna’s hand. “And I’m not saying I want to retire, like, tomorrow. I just think we need to put a timeline on this. I want to exit with some dignity.”

Ilya looks to Yuna, and there’s something in his eyes she hasn’t seen yet, something heart-wrenching and resigned. He turns back to Shane. “Okay. So we set a deadline.”

“Two months,” Shane says quickly, because of course he’s thought about it. Of course he’s done the calculations, thought through the logic. “My birthday is in two months. If I’m not, you know, better by then. That’s when I’ll retire.”

For a long time, really since the day he was drafted, Yuna has had a vision for her son’s retirement. Oh, it would be grand. A Hall of Fame induction, a Lifetime Achievement Award in Vegas, a handshake from the Prime Minister, a front-page headline in the Globe and Mail.

But now, she thinks, it might be something different. Something quiet – dignified, controlled, the way he’d want; but still. He deserves so much more. He deserves to be remembered in a way that he can’t even do for himself.

She blinks slowly, keeping the tears at bay. She squeezes her son’s hand and says the only thing she can think to say.

“I love you.”

---------------

There is one more topic for the business meeting. It is something Yuna has been working on quietly, steadily; not even Ilya knows.

This is what Yuna is best at; paperwork is never just paperwork. Every sheet bears a weight.

“Shane,” she begins. “I’ve consulted with your attorney and with the players’ union. You have a case to pursue criminal assault charges against Alexandre Giraud.”

Shane looks to Ilya, then back at her. “Hits happen all the time in hockey. It’s not a crime.”

“It was a dirty hit,” Ilya says, almost a growl.

Yuna nods carefully, restraining her own anger. “There is evidence that the hit may have been—pre-meditated.”

“Evidence?”

“A history of homophobia,” Yuna says, holding up a hand toward Ilya – a reminder: stay calm. Ilya leans back in his chair, arms crossed.

Shane nods, looking down. His jaw is set grimly.

Yuna continues, inhaling a steadying breath. “The extent of your brain injury, Shane—it’s taken so much from you. Giraud should see justice served.”

She watches her son, the way he thinks, the way he considers every decision with a small, unconscious frown. His daughter does this, too; another strange and wonderful thing.

“I don’t think I want that,” he says, finally. “It won’t change anything.” He looks up now, looks to Ilya. “I assume you disagree.”

“Oh, I disagree,” Ilya says plainly. “I want Giraud to die in prison, and then be reincarnated, and then die in prison again. Eaten by rats.”

Shane half-laughs; Yuna’s heart breaks.

Ilya leans forward, voice low. “You would not be you if you did this. I know. And so I am glad he will not be eaten by rats. Because if he was, it would mean I have lost you.”

Yuna looks at her two sons, side by side, and she can see them in her mind’s eye that summer day, two boys, really, frightened and hopeful. Just looking for a future.

This wasn’t what any of them had in mind.

---------------                

David portions Caesar salad onto plates while Lidiya and Niko fling croutons at one another. Ilya reaches over and eats one crouton from each of their plates, earning reprimand in angry, high-pitched Russian.

“I think we should still do the camp,” Shane says between bites. “This summer. I don’t need my brain to work to do that, right?”

“Mm, no, brain is not needed for this. Is why Hayden Pike still teaches there.”

Shane snorts, actually snorts laughing, and Yuna can’t help but smile. That he’s found a path to joy, through all of this – well, it’s more than she can say for herself.

She takes the tongs from David and serves herself a second helping. David sits down next to her, brushing his shoulder against hers. He’d done that on their wedding day, she recalls; and he’d leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Welp. Guess now it’s us against the world.”

She pats his knee under the table, as she had then, too. Memory is funny that way, how something so small, an everyday movement, a touch, can transport you.

---------------

Back in Ottawa, she gets a text from Ilya. Can you send me cloud drive of Shane’s games?

He should have access, she writes back quickly.

A laughing-crying emoji crosses the screen. He does not know his password. He does not remember any passwords. Has not checked email in 5 months

And oh, of all things, this makes her laugh. Her shoulders shake with it. David looks over at her silently from the couch, eyebrows raised.

She shakes her head and types, Sending now.

Chapter 14: Work

Chapter Notes

OTTAWA

MARCH 2032

The night before, Shane had a dream that was also a memory.

It wasn’t a lost memory. It was one that he knew, one of the last things he remembered, really, before everything went black. October 2010 at Centre Bell, coach tapping his shoulder, hopping over the boards and finding his place on centre ice. Opposite him, Ilya – arrogant, imposing; young, compared to now – so young, both of them – the churning roar of the crowd suddenly crushed into a thin, buzzing silence as they stood face to face, sticks clacking between them, an anticipation, a hunger. His voice, a voice that knew Shane’s secrets, the only sound that mattered:

“Shane Hollander. Will you disappoint them?”

He jolted awake as the puck dropped.

“You okay?” Ilya mumbled beside him, muted, into his pillow. At the foot of their bed, Deke exhaled softly, a comforting sound.

Same voice, same man. And Shane couldn’t help but think, he had disappointed them. All of them; but himself, really, mainly. To end up here, like this, an uncertain past behind him and an even less certain future ahead.

“Yeah,” Shane whispered, moving closer to Ilya, to his warmth. “Just a dream.”

Now it’s morning, and after the bright, bustling routine that Shane has come to love – awaking to their tiny, sleepy alarm clock nestled between them; breakfast together, passing bowls of fruit and yogurt to small, waiting hands (Niko not-so-sneakily slipping banana slices to Deke under the table); braiding Lidiya’s hair, tactile, confident (Shane has now mastered both fishtail and French) – Ilya stands across from Shane in the entryway of the now-silent house, car keys in hand, while Shane lifts his skate bag to his shoulder.

“You ready?” Ilya smiles a small, encouraging smile; yet Shane still hears the echo of his voice, from months ago, or years ago – decades – or just last night, boastful and teasing and somehow reading the deepest, greatest fear etched in Shane’s consciousness like a tattoo, subcutaneous, omnipresent. Will you disappoint them?

“I’m ready.” Shane grasps the strap of his bag, solid, familiar. He takes a breath. “Fuck yes. I’m ready.”

He’s back on the ice. He’s like a sailor who’s been lost at sea, finally on solid ground. His skates are tight, neatly tied, blades sharp. Beneath him, the ice holds him up, carries his weight forward, a trustworthy old friend.

The Centaurs’ training facility is empty, the team on a roadie ahead of playoffs. Claire and a trainer named Roy have set out a row of cones for Shane to circle and weave, slowly, steadily. It goes weirdly well. He’s comfortable; he’s happy. There’s some stiffness in his leg, but no pain. Claire takes notes on a clipboard while Roy monitors pacing on a stopwatch. The thirty minutes are up in a flash.

From the stands, Ilya rises to his feet, applauding, whooping. “Hollander! Hollander!” he chants.

“Shut up, asshole,” Shane calls, but he’s laughing.

He skates to the bench, high-fiving Roy on his way, and sits while Claire prescribes stretches and exercises and strict instructions to monitor his body for pain, soreness, or discomfort. They’ll meet again in two days and repeat this process, a little more intensely, a little longer. There’s a path forward, and for the first time in a while, Shane feels like he can trust himself. Like he knows what to do next – not learning, not guessing, not grasping desperately onto other people’s memories of how he is or was or should be.

He knows himself on the ice. He’s home.

Shane showers in the locker room and the soap is the same soap that they use in Montreal, or used – do they still use it? He would have no way of knowing. It’s cheap and masculine and barely foamy but he loves it because it’s familiar and because it’s here, at the rink, where he belongs.

He towels off and changes at his stall. It’s still weird, a bit, his name emblazoned boldly in a room that’s not painted blue and red. Something catches his eye in the stall next to his – small, carved initials, IR ♡ SH. He smiles involuntarily. The stall belongs to someone named Haas now, but Shane realizes, it used to be Ilya’s. Five years, they would have played together. Would have stood next to each other in this room, before and after practice. He can’t quite picture it, but he can imagine that maybe, it had been good. Maybe it had been really good.

He finds Ilya in the corridor, leaning against a wall that features a life-sized mural of himself in Centaurs’ gear, a bold graphic of his Cyrillic signature beside the number eighty-one. He stands there listless, hands in his pockets, one foot propped on the wall, like he has no purpose until Shane steps into his sphere, and then he lights up with this ease about him that wraps them both in warmth. Shane has grown used to the way Ilya looks at him like this, but that doesn’t mean it still doesn’t surprise him. Or thrill him.

“You good?” Ilya asks, pushing himself off the wall.

“So good,” Shane says, and he pulls Ilya into a hug because it just feels right. Because he wants to hold this man close, like a thank-you, like a sigh of relief.

“I can take you home now,” Ilya says into his shoulder, “Or.”

“Or what?”

“Or, you can come to work with me.”

“You don’t work,” Shane says, narrowing his eyes. He loosens the hug, pulls back to look at Ilya plainly. “You’re a retired stay-at-home dad.”

“Being retired stay-at-home dad is work. Very hard work. All day, I work, taking care of adorable kids and annoying, boring husband.”

Shane rolls his eyes.

Ilya rolls his eyes back. “Couple times a year, I get called in to work. It is modern times! The gig economy.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Come with me and see?”

“Why are you always so cryptic?” Shane grumbles, but he nods, too. He shifts the weight of his skate bag on his shoulder and follows Ilya out into the parking lot.

---------------

The rink at uOttawa is familiar. Shane has skated here a few times, as a kid. Ontario playoffs in junior league; a training camp one summer. Banners in garnet and grey hang above the ice, proclaiming past OUA championship wins.

Ilya saunters in confidently, Shane trailing behind. A chorus of woo-hoo’s and “Coach!” greets them. A team of young women are on the ice warming up, chattering.

“Is that Shane Hollander?” someone asks. “Holy shit.”

“You’re my hero!” a voice calls, like a fan at a rock concert. Teammates whistle in agreement.

Shane waves stiltedly at the gathering crowd that skates up to the edge of the ice. He looks uncertainly toward Ilya, still not entirely clear what, exactly, Ilya’s job here even is.

“Yes, yes,” Ilya announces loudly, “this is my famous, handsome husband Dr. Shane Hollander. The ‘doctor’ is only honorary; do not call him this or it will go to his head.”

There’s laughter. An older woman in a garnet windbreaker skates up to them, short grey hair beneath a Gee-Gees cap. “You can’t bring celebrities to my rink unannounced, Roz,” she says sternly. “You’re distracting my girls.”

“Coach,” Ilya says, eyes smiling. “Meet my husband, Shane Hollander.”

“We’ve met,” the woman says crisply, and Shane braces himself to once again be informed by other people about a memory of someone he should have known.

But then he realizes. “Oh my god. Coach Winters?”

“Good to see you, Hollander.”

“What is this? What is happening?” Ilya looks between them, bewildered, delighted.

Shane exhales a laugh. “Assistant Coach Winters, from the junior national team. 2008?”

“2009,” Coach Winters corrects. “In 2008, Russia crushed you. Then I joined up and the next year you crushed Russia.”

“Ilya,” Shane says, grabbing his wrist excitedly. “You were there, too.” He knows Ilya wouldn’t have met Coach Winters then, wouldn’t have had reason to remember her even if he had. But there’s something elating about this crossing of paths, a memory of a place and time that they both share, before they truly knew each other.

“You never told me this,” Ilya accuses, directing a mock-angry look at the coach.

She shrugs. “Didn’t seem relevant.” Then she turns to face the team on the ice, who are nosily crowding forward. “Get back out there, you lot, or it’s bag skates.”

---------------

Fresh off a win against McMaster, the uOttawa women’s team is headed to the U Sports championships. Since retiring, Ilya has been acting as guest coach for the team’s annual run-up to the provincial and national play-offs.

“You’ve never gotten to come watch,” Ilya tells Shane from the other side of the boards. “You’re always at practice or on the road this time of year.”

“They’re good,” Shane comments, watching the group on the ice. “Goalie is a brick wall.”

“That’s Levesque. She’s pre-med.”

“What’s the deal with thirty-one?” Shane asks, nodding toward a winger whose stick-handling has caught his eye. She’s fast, smart. Has a sixth sense for where the puck is, even when it’s out of sight.

“Ah, Gilroy. She’s good.”

“She’s really good.”

“All the way from Yellowknife. Business major, I think.”

Ilya skates away, pausing next to Coach Winters, nodding at something she says, then calling out instructions and line changes. Shane watches him intently, the seriousness beneath his levity, the light in his eyes. The pride. He’s firm, encouraging, analytic. The team respond to him with effortless trust.

It’s afternoon, now, and they drive straight to the kids’ school for pick-up. Shane watches Ilya’s profile in the driver’s seat, comfortable, invigorated. “You should do this more,” Shane says. “More than a couple times a year.”

“Mm, too busy,” he says. “It is fun, though. They are talented, yes?”

“You are talented. You’re a good coach.” At a red light, Shane catches his eye. “When I retire—”

“If,” Ilya interrupts.

“When – this season, next season, whenever – I can do this stuff. Pick up the kids, take them places. I can take over coaching Timbits for Lidiya. And you can do this, for real. If you want.”

Ilya shakes his head as if to dismiss the idea, but he doesn’t say anything, and Shane hopes that means he’s considering it, weighing it in his mind. Shane doesn’t know what the future holds – and who does, really? – but he knows this: he’s done being a burden. He’s done letting Ilya put his life on hold to care for his broken, fucked-up brain.

Today was a good day. He stood on the ice today, a feeling of promise blooming in him, hopeful and hungry.

Ilya deserves that, too.

---------------

“Okay.” Ilya claps his hands together and leans forward, opening his laptop on the coffee table. “You have been avoiding this.”

“Avoiding what?”

“Hockey. Watching it.”

“I haven’t been avoiding it, exactly.”

“I put on game and you get up and leave the room. This is exactly what ‘avoiding’ means.”

Shane lowers his eyes, hands fidgeting in his lap. “I mean, I don’t know. It’s like—I don’t really want to watch. It feels weird.”

“Can you tell me why?” Ilya sets his hand gently over Shane’s, stilling them.

Shane pauses, and Ilya watches his face, watches the words form practiced sentences in his mind before they rise to his lips. Still his Shane; always his Shane.

“For one thing,” he begins, “I’m mad that I can’t play right now. I’m pissed. So yeah, maybe a little, the thought of watching makes me like, jealous.” He looks up at Ilya now, earnest, quieter. “I’m also angry because I can’t remember anything. About the season, the players. Hockey is my whole universe but right now it’s, like, foreign. And I know you would explain everything and catch me up, but I don’t want that. I just want to know—to remember.”

Ilya brings his arms around Shane’s neck and pulls him close to his side. Shane leans willingly, pressing his face into Ilya’s shoulder.

“Thank you for explaining to me,” Ilya says into his hair. “But.”

“But what?” Shane pulls back, settling back against the couch cushion.

“I am not letting you retire, or think about retiring, without knowing your career.”

“You’ve told me about it.”

“Yes, but you have not seen it.”

Shane considers this grimly, eyes flicking to the laptop, to a screensaver of Lidiya and Niko in the stands at a Cens game. The same photo Ilya had shown him on day eleven in the hospital; a revelation.

“I asked your mom for cloud drive of your games. She has organized everything by year. I would like to show you. I think—I know you feel weird, and angry. I understand this. But I think, really, you will enjoy to see these.” Ilya’s lips tilt into a small, teasing smile. “You’re an awesome player to watch, Shane Hollander.”

Shane remembers this, remembers saying the same to Ilya in Regina that day. Remembers shaking his hand through a cloud of ego and cigarette smoke.

“Fine,” he says finally.

With a smile, Ilya leans forward and logs into the laptop. “We will start with All-Star game, I think,” he says eagerly. “2017. First time we play together.”

“Hey, Ilya?”

“Yes?”

“What is a cloud drive?”

A laugh rises from Ilya’s chest, genuine and fond. “Мой путешественник во времени,” he says, pulling Shane close, and Shane doesn’t know what it means, but it feels warm.

Niko joins them on the sofa when he comes downstairs, swearing up and down that his homework is done (it isn’t); Lidiya joins them soon after, having concluded her daily scales and arpeggios. They squeeze together, the four of them, Deke snoozing in the corner of the room, and watch the final in Milan, Shane’s gold-winning goal, a perfectly placed wrist shot off an assist from Ilya.

“Yes!” Niko exclaims, leaning forward excitedly. “So cool.”

“Mm-hm,” Ilya agrees, tossing a smile over to Shane at his side. “The coolest.”

Shane watches, interested, fearful, glad and devastated all at once. He watches himself and Ilya hoist the Centaurs’ first cup, side by side; watches a gloriously dirty sliding goal in the last two minutes against Montreal, a move Ilya tells him commentators still talk about; watches a hat trick in a second cup final, this one without Ilya – retired by now – but Shane sees himself on screen finding the camera and mouthing through sweat and a beaming smile, I love you.

Fuck. Fuck this Etch-a-Sketch brain. Fuck every good thing that’s been taken from him.

“Hey,” Ilya says gently, squeezing his shoulder.

“Hey,” he says back. His eyes find the twin gold medals mounted on the wall. The framed photo of Family Skate. The dog curled up snugly across the room, grown so big now, a physical reminder of time passing them by, like an hourglass.

He thinks of Niko’s announcement over carrot sticks, a few weeks ago, the steady conviction with which he’d shared his plans to retire from hockey and pursue something he cares about more. How someone so small can know themselves so well, a soft and vibrant certainty. He looks at his son, who watches the laptop screen intently; at his daughter, growing tired, eyelids drooping.

He’s tired, too. It is getting late.

Chapter End Notes

iCloud came out in 2011 and Google Drive in 2012. Мой путешественник во времени = "my time traveller." I haven't been translating the Russian because it is meant not to be understood, the way Shane experiences it. But I thought this one was cute :)

Chapter 15: Light

Chapter Notes

OTTAWA

APRIL 2032

The cloud drive yields other treasures.

In a folder titled Media Appearances, Shane discovers that Ilya once guest-judged a show called Canada’s Drag Race. He assumed – recalling the Maserati Ilya drove in 2010 – that it would involve cars. (It did not.)

There’s also a Heritage Minute which had aired during Pride Month one year. “In 2022, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov became the first Canadian same-sex partners to win the Stanley Cup,” the narrator concludes over a swell of inspiring music.

“First and only,” Ilya corrects, scoffing at the laptop like it has personally offended him.

“Why’d they get actors to play us?” Shane asks, genuinely baffled. “We’re not like the insulin guy. We’re still alive.”

“‘Insulin guy,’ Ilya tuts. “Put some respect on Frederick Banting’s name.”

“What’s in that folder?” Shane asks, pointing. It’s labelled, UNGA.

“Ah. This is my speech.”

“Speech?”

“At the UN,” he says casually.

“What were you doing giving a speech at the UN?”

Ilya smirks. “What? You think I am not smart enough?”

Shane knows he’s teasing, but he still backtracks. “Of course I don’t think that. Just, I didn’t think hockey players were like, their go-to speech-givers.”

“Do you want to watch or what?” He presses play.

Ilya stands at a podium, handsome (of course), sharp angles and neatly trimmed hair. He looks a bit more like Shane remembers him from before the accident, more serious, something grim and resolved in his eyes. The speech is short, maybe five minutes. Shane listens to his voice, the gravity of it, low and heartfelt.

Ilya watches Shane watch the screen. “You have no idea what I’m saying, do you.”

“Not a clue,” Shane replies. “I really need to work on my Russian.”

“It is about war in Ukraine, and queer rights in Russia. It is, ah, criticism. Very serious thing for me to do. I was very scared that day.”

“It looks like you did a good job.”

“Only because you were there. See?” He points to an indistinguishable silhouette of the back of someone’s head in the audience.

“How can you tell that’s me?”

He shrugs. “I just can.”

There’s a folder called, Wedding (Unedited). Ilya clicks into it with a wink. “You have not seen our wedding.”

“You showed me pictures. You told me about it.”

“I forgot Yuna has this, honestly,” Ilya says fondly. “She is digital hoarder. Hours and hours of wedding footage in here.”

They scroll through shaky cellphone videos and professional B-roll from a videographer, and Ilya lights up pointing out the guests, laughing with these memories that he tries to pour out of his chest loudly into the air, like maybe they’ll osmose into Shane’s brain and lodge themselves there, unshakable. There’s someone named Harris spilling champagne on Scott Hunter; there’s a frantic fifteen-minute search for missing rings which turned out to be in Svetlana’s purse the whole time; now here is Boodram tripping over David’s Mississauga cousin’s too-long dress, causing a domino-like collapse of folding chairs into the aisle. It’s all footage of things that had gone wrong, but Ilya is joyous, radiant, remembering.

“I didn’t realize it was so—chaotic,” Shane says. “It sounded more, like, romantic, when you told me about it before.” Not that it hadn’t been romantic, clearly, the clips of their first dance, holding each other so closely Shane could practically hear Ilya’s heartbeat through the screen.

Ilya looks at him then, right in the eye, smug and unserious and completely smitten. “Shane. You are gay amnesiac MLH player married to exiled Russian drag show judge. Everything about us is chaotic.”

---------------

Shane skates daily now, for a full hour, sometimes two. Claire no longer scribbles rehab exercises on her clipboard. Now it’s all Roy’s show, drills for speed and endurance. By mid-month, Shane has a stick in hand and is shooting pucks across the ice. He is back.

He feels his sense of self surge back into his chest, almost like it never left. He feels every version of himself, even the parts he doesn’t remember, come to life on the ice. The version that once held his dad’s hands, tentative, determined, on the Rideau Canal. The version that sat across from his parents one day in grade seven, resolute in his decision that they should say yes to the scout, yes to the opportunity, because hockey was his life’s purpose – even then, just a kid, he knew.

The version that once faced off against this confusing contradiction of a man – Will you disappoint them? – that challenge, goading, so painfully spot-on, proving that even when they barely knew each other at all, Ilya knew him anyway.

He remembers draft day; remembers Ilya’s fingers brushing his, a water bottle, a gym. Mirrored walls casting their reflections into a prism of infinite versions of each other. There has never been a Shane without both Ilya and hockey. Always intertwined, since the beginning. Shane thinks back to the first day in the hospital, the shock, the fear. He shouldn’t have been surprised to discover he was married to Ilya Rozanov. It made so much fucking sense that he hates himself for ever doubting it.

(He hates how long it took him to take the stupid ring out of the stupid fucking Ziploc bag and just wear the damn thing.)

---------------

“I told you we’d be late.”

“We’re one minute early.”

“That’s late!” Shane hisses as they squeeze past the knees of annoyed parents and at least one less annoyed, mostly awestruck hockey fan.

“Dad! Papa!” Niko has saved them a pair of seats on either side of him. He pats the empty chairs impatiently. His uniform is untucked, wrinkled beyond belief. Shane knows there will be a story tonight over dinner about how it happened. At the end of the row are his parents, his mom's face predictably judgemental at their tardiness.

“Yuna, David,” Ilya greets warmly. They sit just as the lights dim. “Спасибо, Коля.” Ilya squeezes Niko’s shoulder, unconsciously, second nature. 

Niko rolls his eyes, and it’s such an Ilya eyeroll, so obviously inherited, Shane’s heart lifts from it. “Shh. It’s starting.”

Polite applause ripples through the auditorium – Ilya’s clapping loud above the rest – as a miniature orchestra of tiny maestros march on stage in practiced single-file. They take a bow, mostly in sync, and Shane finds himself clapping even louder, too.

There’s a mostly in-tune rendition of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and something fun, staccato, maybe a distilled interpretation of Mozart. Lidiya is seated between another cellist Shane recognizes from school pick-up, and her friend Maryam, who is learning violin. She’s smiling as she plays, and it’s such a beautiful sight, and Shane knows that she doesn’t even realize she’s smiling, because he does that, too, on the ice, when he’s most at ease, most himself.

After a piece that’s entirely pizzicato and only partially in tempo, the stage clears. But Lidiya doesn’t go. Instead, the teacher comes to her side and helps move her chair to the centre.

“Did you know about this?” Shane whispers.

“No,” Ilya says honestly, still applauding even though everyone else has stopped.

“Shh,” Niko hushes, sinking into his chair.

Lidiya lifts her bow and closes her eyes, and starts to play.

It’s soft and slow; open strings rumble. They’ve heard her practice this before, floating from behind her closed door upstairs. This time is different, though. She’s in the spotlight, and it’s like the light radiates from inside her.

She finishes, and takes a stiffly polite bow, and hurries offstage to join her friends. Her parents, obviously, give a standing ovation. Her brother does, too, and not even reluctantly.

They pick up pizza on the way home, the boxes stacked next to a small cello case in the trunk of the car. Lidiya sits quietly in the backseat, a bouquet of flowers across her lap, while Niko recounts the moment of the surprise solo reveal. “I was like – bwahhh—” He gestures an explosion, eyes wide. “—Mind. Blown.”

“You okay, Lidochka?” Ilya asks, glancing at the rearview mirror. “You did so well.”

“Yeah,” she says, quiet but honest. “It was fun.” And there’s that smile again, a reflex, a truth. Shane catches it as he looks back over his shoulder, and he holds onto it, like a firefly in a jar, precious and bright.

---------------

He Facetimes with Hayden, now and again. Amber has formed an accordion-based punk band. Jackie is recovering from a flu.

“How did you know you were ready to retire?” Shane asks one afternoon. Ilya is at speed skating with Niko; Lidiya is upstairs, practicing, something cheerful and legato. Beside him on the sofa, Deke naps, his head in Shane's lap, snoring softly.

“Well, I was tired, mostly,” Hayden says, thinking. “All the time, my body felt, like, heavy. And I just had this sense that if I kept going, I wouldn’t enjoy it anymore. I wanted to leave while I still enjoyed it.”

Shane is silent for a while, for too long, apparently, because Hayden speaks again. “Are you feeling that, too? You’re ready to be done with hockey?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be done with hockey. But I think it can look different now. Everything’s already different than how I thought things would end up.”

Hayden nods. “Different isn’t bad.”

“It’s not,” Shane agrees. “But fuck, Hayden. I barely even started and now it’s over.”

“I know.”

“It’s the right thing,” Shane says, sullen but certain. “Even if I got my memory back tomorrow, I think, I would still want this.”

“Shane motherfucking Hollander, retiree.” Hayden shakes his head, but he wears this smile that Shane has come to trust. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

---------------

“Ilya,” he says into the dark. “I’m going to retire.”

He expects Ilya to respond: Are you sure? Or, We haven’t reached your deadline yet.

Instead he says, “I know.”

Shane releases a breath. He shifts closer to Ilya, lets Ilya’s arms wrap around him, pulling him close, chests touching. Heartbeats.

“Thank you,” Shane says. “For giving me this life.”

“I’ve given you nothing, Shane,” Ilya whispers, running a hand through his hair. “Everything you have, you’ve earned. You fought for. Even if you don’t remember, it’s still true.”

No. He’s not understanding. That’s not what Shane meant, not entirely. He tries again, blinking back something tight and urgent behind his eyes. “I have a purpose. Off the ice.” He sets a palm on Ilya’s chest, as if to transmit a signal through touch alone. “I’ve never had that before. It’s the only reason I’m—brave enough to retire.”

“You are brave,” Ilya agrees. So quiet, Shane can barely hear him.

“Fuck.” Shane laughs, an exhalation, really, frustrated and tongue-tied. “I—God, sometimes I’m so pissed to be married to you.”

Ilya cranes his neck to look at him, a playful scowl on his lips. “What’s that supposed to mean, Hollander?”

“No, just—already married, I mean. That I’ve wasted the whole past six months falling in love with you and I don’t even get to ask you to marry me at the end.”

Ilya kisses him then, smiling softly against his lips. “Oh, this is easy problem. I will divorce you. Will call lawyers first thing tomorrow.”

“Yeah? You’d do that for me?”

“Don’t you know by now, Shane Hollander? I’d do anything for you.”

Chapter End Notes

I need someone to write a fic of Ilya guest judging Drag Race please & thank you!
Update/Correction: There is one and it is excellent!! Check out "Retirement, Apparently" by cheryl123sing. Thank you CaptAcorn for the rec.

Thank you so much for following along - I really am so grateful for the support and all your comments have been so lovely and thoughtful.

Chapter 16: Forward

OTTAWA

MAY 2032

Ilya wakes up early on the day of the U Sports final for morning skate. After a shutout against UBC in the semis, the Gee-Gees will be facing reigning champs Concordia on home ice. He presses a kiss into the back of Shane’s neck before unfurling the covers, his warmth leaving Shane’s side. Shane grumbles at this.

“You will bring the kids to the game, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Your parents will come. Make sure David does not wear McGill sweatshirt.”

“No promises.”

Ilya leans on the washroom doorframe, toothbrush in hand. He’s wearing comfortable jeans, light washed, and a grey uOttawa hoodie under a crisp blazer. He looks weirdly professorial – a cool, hip professor; well, a hot professor, really – and it’s such a quiet, worn-in way of being that stands in contrast to Shane’s long-ago-yet-not memories of Ilya on the ice, athletic and instinctual and powerful.

There’s power here, too, though. A steady, understated certainty. Power in the way he knows his players, their majors, their hometowns, in the way Shane had seen him help Gilroy with the timing of her slapshot, analytical, competent. Seeing things others could not, even Coach Winters; and trusting the team to trust him, to trust what he sees.

At the last practice Shane had been to, Coach Winters had skated up to him, leaning over the boards. “Hollander,” she greeted.

“Coach.”

“Gilroy might be better than you at nineteen.”

Nineteen still feeling heart-wrenchingly recent for Shane, he nodded, agreeing. Stick handling like Gilroy’s is generational.

There was something kind of comforting about being around Coach Winters. She had known him then, prospect Shane, but had not known him since. She had gone on to assistant-coach the women’s national team, and then head coach of Vancouver’s WMLH franchise, before, finally, uOttawa. She had followed his career, of course, but they had never crossed paths since the 2009 World Juniors. In a way, she was like a time capsule, Shane thought – she held an image of him, a memory of who he was, how he was, unchanged.

“Listen,” Coach Winters said. She had always been curt. “I’m retiring.”

“Congratulations,” Shane said, hoping that was the right reaction.

“Wife and I are buying a condo in Florida.”

“That sounds nice.”

“There’ll be a search,” she said, looking out onto the ice where Ilya stood, hands on his hips, watchful. “It’s a university, so there will have to be a search, you understand.”

Shane didn’t understand. He started to say so, but Coach cut him off.

“Talk to him. Convince him.” She turned back to face him, catching him squarely in the eye. “I’ll put in a word. If he wants it, it’s his.”

Ilya says something indecipherable around his toothbrush.

“Huh?”

He steps back into the washroom, spits into the sink, then leans around the corner again to look at Shane. “I said, what are you looking at?”

Shane sits up in bed. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“That you’re going to win today,” Shane says. “And that you look hot.”

“I think so, too.”

“That you’re going to win, or that you look hot?”

“Both.” He grins.

---------------

The rink is alive in a way Shane knows well, and misses. The stands are full, students and neighbours in garnet and grey regalia, and a healthy contingent of Concordia fans speaking excited, rapid-fire French. A pep band plays some brassy arrangement of a pop song he’s never heard of, and members of a student club hawk hot dogs to benefit a scholarship fund. It’s loud and bright which normally would eat under his skin, but for the anticipatory energy that he loves so much, the electric thrill of ice fresh off the Zamboni’s run, players warming up in careful, sacred arcs, readying muscles, testing limits.

The front row of seats is cordoned off behind a velvet rope and a sign that says VIP. Ilya leans over the boards talking animatedly with proud parents. The Gilroys have flown in from Yellowknife.

“There’s Papa,” Lidiya points out as they take their seats. Hearing her, Ilya looks over and waves a small, happy wave, face alight.

“Can we get hot dogs?” Niko asks, as if he didn’t just eat two PB&J’s and a bag of carrot sticks before leaving the house. On cue, Shane’s parents arrive with a tray of hot dogs and fries. His dad is, in fact, wearing a McGill sweatshirt.

“What?” his mom says innocently, meeting Shane’s raised eyebrows as Niko reaches for the tray. “Proceeds go to a scholarship fund. We had to, you know. For the cause.”

“Is there a seat left for me?” a woman’s voice says from behind him.

“Тётя Света!” Lidiya exclaims, leaping out of her seat. She scrambles past Shane’s knees as he turns around to see Lidiya fling her arms around the woman, who leans down to accept the hug, fountain of curly hair tumbling forward.

“Kolya, no hug?” she accuses, but he just shrugs, mouth full of hot dog.

Shane stands and holds out a hand. He’s seen her picture, of course; he’s heard Ilya’s stories; he’s sat beside Ilya while they Facetimed in the soft-spoken Russian of childhood friends. But in person, she’s scarily beautiful and alarmingly charming and even though he has seen a video of her dancing with him at his wedding, he feels as though he suddenly knows nothing about her at all. “Um, it’s nice to meet you, Svetlana.”

“Shane,” she says seriously, looking at his outstretched hand as if it has suddenly sprouted feathers. “I know your brain is mush, but this is ridiculous.” And she folds him into a forceful hug that threatens to bruise his ribs but also smells like flowers.

Ilya skates up to them, shouting, “What are you doing here?”

“Сюрприз!” She leans over the boards to kiss him on either cheek. “Thought I’d stop by on my way back from Toronto. I hear the next Shane Hollander of women’s collegiate ice hockey is playing.”

“Number thirty-one,” Ilya says eagerly. “I’m telling you, Sveta, she is special.”

Svetlana is a scout for the league, which really, was her calling all along. Luxury cars? Ilya looks back on that era with a shake of his head. As much as she had tried to distance herself from hockey, from her father’s legacy, it always called her back. She has an eye for potential, an almost frightening ESP. It had been her, after all, who had lain in the snow next to Ilya as kids, heads touching, the winter after his mother died; forming snow angels beneath the towering concrete of the neighbourhood rink, she had spoken into the air, like a premonition, “Hockey can take you away from this place, Ilyusha. If you want it to. You are good enough.”

She sits between Shane and Yuna, catching them up on her travels – before Toronto had been Prague, Helsinki, and Ufa. From her purse, she pulls out a pair of trading cards signed by her monstrously tall Slavic NBA player husband, and hands them to Lidiya and Niko, who marvel at the holographic animation of an iconic slam dunk.

She also pulls out a small wrapped package and passes it to Shane. “For you. Early birthday present.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

She nods at him, eyebrows raised. “Open it, open it.”

The gift is small and flat in the palm of his hand. He carefully picks at the tape along the edge and unfurls the wrapping paper to reveal a hotel key card.

Svetlana winks. “Flip it over,” she says.

He does; on the back is written in Sharpie the number 1410.

“Hah,” he laughs involuntarily, face turning red. “This is—how do you even know about this?”

“You think he hasn’t told me everything over the years? He is a blabbermouth. I’ve heard it all.”

“But how—?”

“I kid you not, Shane, it was fate. Randomly, this was my room in Toronto literally for the last week.”

Shane looks at the key card, at the scribbled number, and he’s sort of stymied by the odds of it all, and embarrassed that Svetlana’s business trip has intersected with this memory, awkward and secret yet so, so important. It’s probably the most important number that he knows.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, then slaps his hand over his mouth.

“Swear jar,” Niko chirps.

She chuckles, amused. “What is it?”

Shane laughs then, looking up at the ceiling. “Nothing. Just, I think I remembered my email password.”

---------------

The Gee-Gees win 3-2 and the rink erupts as the horn sounds. Shane flies to his feet as if he’s been a uOttawa fan all his life and not just for the past few weeks. On the ice, Ilya and Coach Winters are swarmed by their elated team, screaming and whistling. Svetlana moves smoothly through the VIP row toward the Gilroys and hands them her business card. Their daughter scored the winning goal.

“He looks really happy,” Svetlana comments as she returns to her seat.

“He is, I think.” Whether he’s happy with him, with this halfway existence of day-to-day normalcy and wrenching loss, Shane feels unsure. But he watches the celly unfolding now, fist pumps and high-fives, Ilya pulling Levesque into a bear hug and saluting Gilroy reverently. He doesn’t remember watching Ilya first win the cup, but he imagines it felt like this. Proud.

“He is,” she confirms steadily.

Lidiya tugs on his hand, and he lifts her up onto his shoulders. Ilya finds them in the crowd and waves with both hands, tilting back his head, sun-bright.

There’s a future taking shape in Shane’s mind. A new routine: campus practices, away games in Waterloo and Kingston. He’ll miss their long, quiet days together while the kids are at school; but he knows he can handle it, at least for the length of the season. Maybe he’ll sign up for a Russian class and meet Ilya at the dining hall for lunch.

He tells Ilya his plan that night, sitting up in bed in the dark of the room.

“This is not the first time you have planned out our future like this,” he says softly. “Dangerous habit, Shane Hollander.”

“But it’s good, right? It’s a good idea.”

“Coach Winters put you up to this?”

“Yes, but she didn’t have to.”

Ilya stares up at the ceiling, into the dark. For so many months, he has thought only about getting through, surviving this, maybe landing at a comfortable alright somewhere between hope and resignation. But Shane, his Shane, wheels always turning – of course it is Shane who sees a way forward. He always has, through the most impossible things.

Ilya doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no. He takes Shane’s hand and kisses his palm, then tugs his arm to pull him back toward him, into the warmth of the bed.

---------------

The day before his forty-first birthday, Shane sits across from his mom at his parents’ house. He fills out a form, signs his name, proofreads a press release.

Ilya taps his shoe to the side of Shane’s under the table, nodding as Yuna explains the plan.

“Ready?” he asks softly.

Shane returns the tap with his foot, gently. He takes a breath and meets Ilya’s eyes. “Ready.”

And like that, Shane Hollander is retired from hockey.

The press release does numbers. Newspapers spread the word. TikTokers mourn and ESPN analyzes. The Centaurs post a moving tribute. Scott Hunter retweets with the caption, The best to ever play the game.

“He did not say this when I retired,” Ilya complains. “He just posted, ‘Look who’s old now.’”

Shane doesn’t post anything himself. No press conference. No interviews. Just—quiet.

It’s what he wants; he knows it’s what he wants. But still, in bed that night, Ilya’s arms around him, he cries.

---------------

The kids bake him a chocolate cake, lopsided, icing melting down its sides. They light candles and sing, and Shane unwraps a clay figurine, blue with yellow polka dots, Lidiya’s fingerprints smudged across the base. On the bottom she’s carved a heart.

He loves it.

From Niko, something unexpected. “I asked Babushka what’s your favourite book, so we can read it together,” he explains. “She said you used to read this all the time when you were eight, like me.” It’s Anne of Green Gables – his own copy, plucked from the shelf of his childhood bedroom, spine worn with creases, his name in shaky child’s handwriting on the inside cover.

Shane hasn’t thought about this book in a long time, even by his chronologically muddled standards. He remembers reading it in school, and then taking it home and re-reading it, at least twice, perhaps because of a stirring admiration for Gilbert Blythe, which he could now admit had been a crush.

(And in a way, hadn’t Ilya’s ribbing back then – “You will not be so nice when we beat you;” accusations of boring in a hotel room, hushed and hurried – been like a yank of Anne’s braid, fondness disguised as infuriating, impish persistence? Maybe smug, annoying boys with hearts of gold had always been his type.)

“This is much too Canadian,” Ilya mutters, but his eyes shine as he watches Shane pull their son into a hug.

“Thank you,” Shane whispers into Niko’s hair.

In Niko’s room that night, they take turns reading, a ritual.

“‘Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about?’” Niko reads steadily, as Anne and Matthew’s buggy makes its way to Avonlea. “‘It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it’s such an interesting world.’”

Yes, Shane thinks. It really is.

Chapter 17: Eggshells

Chapter Notes

OTTAWA

MAY 2032

The day of Ilya’s retirement had been bittersweet. The Centaurs had been knocked out of the East Coast final, infuriatingly by Tampa – whose rebuild had paid off much sooner than anyone expected – and Ilya hated that his last game of his last season was a loss on home ice, but at least he went out with two goals and an assist to his husband on the third.

Being together with Shane on the ice – this was what Ilya would miss the most. Not winning, not trophies. Not even the team, though he loved them, each and every oddball who had seen him through so much hardship in those early years, the warm laughter and easy joking of the locker room like a second home.

No, what he would miss most was passing the puck in a wide arc behind him and knowing, just knowing, that Shane would be there to catch it. Shane was his heart, his mind, his second pair of eyes, and skating with him had felt like skating as one person, intuitive and thrilling and easy in a way that commentators lost their minds over and opposing fans signed petitions about, claiming unfair advantage. They had played All-Star games together before, sure – but finally sharing a team, a uniform, and finding each other on the ice like instinct, like gravity; these had been the greatest years of his career.

Lifting a cup together; a kiss on centre ice. That had been pretty great, too.

After the horn, Tampa WAGs and little ones spilling onto the ice, Ilya took Shane’s hand and they found Yuna and David in the crowd; Niko was cheering in their arms, oblivious to the loss. Ilya pulled his son into a hug, close against his chest, kissing his forehead, smelling his hair – crayons and Johnson & Johnson – and thinking, Who cares? I won after all.

They came home that night to a pair of gold medals framed on the wall, and a sonogram mounted on the fridge. In bed, Shane took Ilya in his arms and pressed kisses to his face, his temple, his jaw, brushing away tears with a careful thumb.

Now it is Ilya’s turn to hold Shane in his arms, and Ilya doesn’t know if he can ease this ache. It is bitter but not sweet; it is grief tinged by longing for something Ilya cannot give him. If Ilya could unscrew his skull and take out his brain and hand it to Shane and say, here, take mine, take my memories – he would. Of course he would. But instead, all he can do is tell stories, and show pictures, and write – every day, still, he writes – and hold Shane close, hold him tight, and press his forehead into Shane’s chest, to his heart, and listen as he cries.

---------------

For Shane’s birthday, he doesn’t go big the way he normally would, spoiling the man year after year in a way that would make him blush, maddeningly, adorably. He knows that Shane would rather not celebrate at all this year, that the passage of time, the addition of another year to a collection of years he does not remember, feels burdensome and frightening and lonely. But you don’t get to skip your birthday when you have kids; there would have to be cake, at minimum.

So Ilya pulls out box mix and preheats the oven and guides Lidiya’s hands as she fills a measuring cup with oil, and helps Niko pick bits of eggshell out of the bowl. And after the kids are asleep – after standing quietly, unseen, at the door of Niko’s bedroom, listening to their alternating voices read from a creased and well-loved book that has known Shane longer than he has – Ilya hands Shane two small, wrapped objects. “Something from the past, and something for the future,” he explains.

First is a puck. “It’s signed by me,” Shane notes quizzically.

“Mm, yes, was very expensive. Very valuable. I had to learn Polish to argue with eBay seller.”

“Polish?”

“Stupid language. Far too many consonants.” Ilya traces Shane’s signature with his forefinger, admiring the looping curves, the handwriting of a younger yet not-so-distant Shane whom Ilya had watched lift the cup on TV and thought to himself, not for the first time, that there was nothing simple or casual about this, because watching Shane’s lifelong dream come true on the screen, Ilya should have felt jealousy, or perhaps nothing at all, but instead had felt unflinchingly, undeniably proud. “Metros auctioned this for charity. It is puck from your first cup. Winning goal.”

“Oh.” Shane looks down at the puck now, reverently, the shape of surprise around his eyes. “That’s—well. Was it really so expensive?”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“You shouldn’t have spent money on this,” Shane chastises, but Ilya isn’t sure he means it.

“You deserve to have it. Something tangible, you know?”

“Tangible,” Shane repeats. He meets Ilya’s eyes, nodding, gripping the puck tighter in his hand. “Thank you.”

Ilya feels the corners of his mouth tick up into a smile. “Here. Open this one.”

The package is flat but dense, unexpectedly heavy. Shane opens the wrapping paper meticulously, refusing to tear it, revealing a leather-bound book monogrammed in embossed gold, SH.

“It’s very nice,” Shane comments, running his fingers over the monogram, admiring the texture. “A journal?”

“A planner,” Ilya says, and leans forward to open the cover. The pages inside contain calendars, to-do lists, daily and monthly agendas, all blank, white space glowing with potential.

“Hm. I do like this,” Shane says, almost to himself. Then, to Ilya: “You know me very well, I think.”

Ilya flops back onto his pillow, arms behind his head. “Ah, yes. It is a blessing and a curse.”

“Why’s that?” Shane laughs, settling back into the bed, leaning his head against Ilya’s chest.

“Blessing because I get to kiss you. Curse because I know you will be angry to find out that your birthday cake was filled with eggshells.”

---------------

The letter comes two weeks after Shane retires. Ilya opens it curiously, intrigued by the insignia, ignoring the fact that it is addressed to Shane and definitely not to him.

And, oh. Oh! He feels his heart swell. “Shane! Shane Shane Shane Shane.” He scurries into the living room, where Shane looks up from his book, puzzled, with this small crease between his eyebrows, just above his glasses. It takes all of Ilya’s energy to pull his focus away from Shane’s face and back to the paper in his hands. “Shane. Something interesting has happened.”

“What?”

“Okay. I maybe did something behind your back,” he confesses. “Last year—before.”

Shane sets his book down on the coffee table and looks at Ilya with an entire question mark of a facial expression. Ilya wants to kiss him. (Ilya always wants to kiss him.) “Usually it takes two years,” he explains hurriedly. “So I did this, thinking, for your retirement next year. But then you retired now, and so, I think, they—accelerated.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Here.” He hands Shane the letter.

“You opened my mail?”

“Just read it.”

At the top is the seal of the Governor General of Canada. “Holy shit.”

Ilya beams. “You’re welcome.”

“No, Ilya, this can’t be right. The Order of Canada is for people who, like, invent vaccines, and human rights lawyers.”

“And Wayne Gretzky,” Ilya points out.

“This says ‘outstanding achievement and merit in service to Canada or humanity at large.’ You seriously think I’ve helped humanity at large?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. The Governor General thinks so.” He pauses, not sure how to put into words that he does think Shane has helped humanity – not an overstatement, not a drama – just a cardboard box on the top shelf of a closet upstairs, filled with evidence of humanity bettered. “I do think so. If you are asking. This is why I submitted a nomination.”

Shane slouches into the couch cushions, holding the letter at arm’s length as if to distance himself from the bizarre words it contains. “That doesn’t—make sense.”

Ilya sits down on the couch next to him, brushing his shoulder against Shane’s, a grounding touch. “I know you do not remember everything. But we have studied a lot together, yes? Learned all about your career, the philanthropy—you understand these are a big deal?”

“I guess so.”

“And through all of it, you have also been first in many things, yes? Asian-Canadian, gay, married to other hotter better hockey player—”

“Asshole.”

“You have made hockey better, Shane.” Ilya takes Shane’s hands in his, grips them tight, as if the solidness of this touch can convey the truth of his words. “In your life. You have fundamentally changed the sport of hockey. It is a better, more challenging, more interesting and important and inclusive sport, because of you.”

Shane looks at his lap, exasperated. “I don’t believe that.”

“You have this in common with future-you,” Ilya says. “He also did not believe in how important he has been. So humble, both my Shanes.” He leans forward, hand curving around the back of Shane’s neck, and kisses him, softly, earnestly. “I am so fucking proud of you. Are you proud of you?”

Shane leans his forehead against Ilya’s as he looks down again at the letter. An unconscious smile plays on his lips as he takes in the words, eyes wide. He doesn’t say anything, but Ilya knows, and it’s like a breeze, the relief of watching his husband finally fucking understand, through clouds of memory and time, that he has changed the world.

---------------

LANAUDIÈRE

JUNE 2032

They go to the cottage.

Ilya has thought a lot about memory lately – about the way memories light up in certain places, like a beacon, glowing and warm, a surge of image and feeling tied to place, a gentle and beloved haunting.

The cottage contains these ghosts, a whispered I love you, a loon call, the smell of too many burgers; a plan, a future forming in the dark, like clay, like hope. Memories of his mother live here, too; that night by the fire had been the first time he’d spoken of her in years; that morning, in Shane’s arms, had been the first time he’d said her name out loud. And so her name echoes in the walls of the cottage, a benediction, and even though he knows his children can’t hear it the way he does, he is glad for them to share space with this memory, to breathe the air where he had once spoken her name with so much love.

The cottage has changed in small ways. Now there are four pairs of shoes by the front door; guest rooms have been claimed by the most permanent kind of guests, painted in favourite colours and decorated with Taylor Swift posters from Lidiya’s collection and glow-in-the-dark stars that remind Niko of his bedroom at home. It is Deke’s first time at the cottage, and they hang his leash on a hook in the entryway ceremoniously as he rushes in to sniff every surface and hidden corner.

Ilya watches Shane enter the structure that he had literally built, envisioned and designed, every wood panel and slanted ceiling to his exact taste – a quiet awe settling on his brow as he stands in the sun-drenched living room. Golden light illuminates his silhouette, glinting across his dark hair, and Ilya says, for no particular reason other than that he can, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Those words feel at home here; a return.

---------------

Unpacking that night, Ilya shifts nervously. Shane notices right away.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” Ilya says too quickly. “It is—I brought something. For you.”

“What’s that?” Shane comes closer as Ilya lifts the packet from his suitcase.

It is thick, now, almost two hundred pages single-spaced. He’d gone to Staples to get it bound with one of those spiral machines, the crackling plastic annoying to him, but necessary. “It is a manuscript. Mine, I mean. I—wrote something.”

He hadn’t meant to keep it a secret. Not at first. He would write at night in the hospital, and then at home while Shane was at physio, and brain scans, and later, at the rink. He would write in these pockets of alone-time because that was when the words most poured out of him, thinking of all the things he most wanted to tell Shane when he wasn’t in the room, as though the shape of Shane’s absence could summon all of Ilya’s thoughts and weave them together like threads of an ancient tapestry. But as it grew and became something maybe real, Ilya wrote when he was alone because he was scared. Scared that Shane might not appreciate seeing their most private moments set in paper and ink, sure; but more than that – scared that it was not good. That he had been entrusted – by fate, by God, by Alexandre Giraud – to capture and protect these most important and sacred memories, and that maybe, he had failed.

Shane takes the pages in his hands curiously, thumb pressing absently against the loops of spiral binding. “When on earth did you have time to do this?” He lifts it to eye level, holding it flat, taking in the magnitude of the task.

“I have been working on it a long time. I have been nervous, to show you.”

“Why?”

“It is, ah, memoir. Very personal.”

Shane nods at this solemnly. “You want me to read it,” he says, understanding, and Ilya is thankful.

“I would like this, yes. I think—I am wanting, maybe, to publish it. But not without your permission.”

“Would future-me give permission, do you think?” Shane looks at Ilya, thoughtful, trusting. Ilya kisses the spot where worry forms between his eyebrows.

“I’m not asking future-Shane. I’m asking you.”

---------------

Shane reads on the deck in the sunlight while the kids swim in the lake and Ilya tosses sticks into the shallows for Deke to fetch. He reads at night under a blanket by the fire after the kids go to sleep, and he reads in bed, glasses slipping down the slope of his nose. And when he is done, he hands the manuscript back to Ilya, inscrutable, and doesn’t say anything.

Ilya isn’t sure whether to prompt him, like, Well, what did you think? Or wait for his husband whose thoughts, he knows, churn in careful succession, to come to him with a fully-formed opinion when he’s ready.

It turns out, he doesn’t need to wait long. Shane showers and brushes his teeth and climbs into bed, Ilya beside him. “It’s very good,” he says.

“You liked it?”

“I did.” Shane pauses, tilting his head, searching for words. “Ilya, it’s like—literary. It’s really well-written.”

Ilya had expected feedback about the content, about the intimate moments, the heartfelt and impossible truths spilled out in eleven-point Calibri. He hadn’t expected Shane to actually like his writing. This takes him by surprise in a warm and breathless way. He smiles; he can’t help it.

“I know it’s not very—grammatical,” he downplays.

“Screw you. It’s perfect. It’s—I don’t know. Dream-like, maybe. The style is really unique.”

“You think so?”

He nods. “The parts about your mother were very moving.”

“Good. Those were hard to write.”

Shane continues, “I like how you played with timelines. How Russia, and your mother, they’re like characters even in the later parts.”

Fuck. He gets it. Ilya’s heart flips, panicked and grateful and relieved. He moves closer to Shane in the bed, kisses his shoulder.

“You should publish it,” Shane asserts. “I’m sure my mom knows people in publishing.”

“You’re okay with it? Even the—?”

“The sex stuff is fine. It’s—I don’t know the right word. Tender? It’s not salacious. I honestly am really glad you shared this with me. It makes me feel closer to, like, actually remembering.”

Ilya kisses his shoulder again, then his temple, then his lips, bringing his hand to Shane’s chin, thumb finding his freckles. He hadn’t written about those freckles; those are his, not for sharing.

“Thank you,” Ilya says into Shane’s hair. “That is what I wanted. For our memories to live somewhere.”

Shane nods against his lips. “I know.”

Chapter End Notes

Thank you to everyone for reading and for the encouragement. Special shoutout to all my Canadians who were summoned to the comments by Chapter 16. I didn't know my headcanon about Shane's first crush being Gilbert Blythe would go so hard lol

Chapter 18: Tide

LANAUDIÈRE

JUNE 2032

Shrieks of laughter ripple across the lake, Ilya splashing Niko and Lidiya in some version of Marco Polo that seems to have absolutely no rules. Shane watches, perched on a boulder overlooking the water. He loves the sound of their laughter.

He’s learned that future-him would be swimming with them, that future-Shane likes, or liked, to swim. But 2010 Shane does not like to swim, does not like the cold of the water, the silt between his toes. He is happy here, watching, drinking in their laughter and the afternoon sun sparkling yellow and gold on the small billowing crests across the lake. Probably, he thinks, future-him learned to love the water because Ilya loves the water. But lately, he has learned that he does not need to hide who he is, his 2010 tendencies, his fears and discomforts. He doesn’t have to pretend; he can just be, and be loved.

He’s been toeing a line for so long, the fragile, diaphanous barrier between giving up and moving on. Both, in a way, are a disappointment, a turning point, and a stab wound. He can’t be sure, entirely, which path he is walking. Maybe both at once. But he knows what is solid now, what he can count on, and what he can give in turn.

Solid like ice beneath his skates; even in the heat of a game, the unpredictability, the chaos, he knows the hollow cut of blades into the ice. He knows what to do, even when he doesn’t.

We grew up together and now we grow old together, Ilya wrote in his manuscript, and Shane felt a pang reading it. He had missed the whole growing-up part. He doesn’t feel forty-one, or retired, or really any different than he had a week ago or a month ago or twenty years ago. And at the same time, he feels massively different; transformed. In love with a man whom he had awoken to a practical stranger; a father – a father – entrusted with the title Dad spoken in small and sacred voices, every utterance of that name transforming him once more in small and sacred ways.

He starts writing in the planner Ilya gave him for his birthday. There’s a section titled One-Year Goals. Travel, he writes at the top of the list. He would love to bring his children, and Ilya, to Japan. He hasn’t been since he was Niko’s age, maybe a little younger. He remembers finding it strange and magical, family members he barely knew speaking in a language he barely understood; the way his mom had lit up, relaxed and untroubled; running through open fields with cousins he hasn’t kept in touch with, the lack of a shared language not stopping them when there were dandelions to wish on and stray cats to chase, and sour-sweet satsumas to pick from the trees of his great-grandma’s orchard.

He hasn’t thought about Japan in a long time. Now, he thinks, he wants his children to know the place. To pass it on to them.

He’ll certainly have time, in retirement.

They roast marshmallows over the fire, sugary fragrant. Lidiya constructs perfectly neat smores and eats them happily. Niko, meanwhile, is somehow covered in melted chocolate.

“Hey Dad,” he says, unguarded and curious, “now that you’re retired. Are you gonna say goodbye?”

“To who?”

“To hockey.”

And it’s such a profound, thoughtless thing for his son to say, mouth full of marshmallows, that Shane laughs at first.

In his manuscript, Ilya described the lead-up to his own retirement, the quiet yet confident arrival at an inevitable yet welcome conclusion. Shane didn’t have that; he knew there was dignity in his choice, and he trusted himself enough to know it was right, even as it broke his heart.

A goodbye to hockey, he supposes, would probably look like some sort of celebration in Ottawa. A retrospective, a speech, an adoring crowd. But he never played in Ottawa, not in a way that he remembers. Not in a way that is imprinted in him like the snap of the puck in his first face-off at his first game at Centre Bell.

“Hey Ilya,” he whispers that night in bed. He trails his fingers across Ilya’s wrist, absently.

“Mm-hmm?” comes a sleepy reply.

“Did I ever get, like, closure? In Montreal. Did I get to say goodbye?”

Ilya rolls over to face him, eyes half-closed. He shakes his head against the pillow. “No, not really. The move to Ottawa was—abrupt.”

“Oh.” Shane rolls onto his back, hands folded across his chest, the distant void of the ceiling pulsing staticky-black in the dark.

“We can go,” Ilya says into the silence. “We can go to Montreal.”

He’s glad Ilya is the one to say it out loud; he’s not sure he would have been able to articulate what he needs – what, exactly, he’s grieving.

“Do we have time, before camp?” His planner is already full with their summer schedule: teaching at camp at the end of June; Lidiya turning six and Niko turning nine – because of course they had planned for off-season birthdays; Ilya’s birthday, as well; then the Order of Canada investiture in July. Weeks barrelling into months, months churning forward into years; an unending tide.

Ilya smiles at him through the dark; Shane can hear it in his voice. “We have all the time in the world.”

---------------

MONTREAL

JUNE 2032

He had barely gotten to know Montreal, really; his home for a decade, but he feels like he’s starting frosh week at university – everything still new and unencumbered. He had been a teenager when he moved here, long-ago-yet-not; he’d had only a few months to settle in, to think to himself I live here now and to actually believe it, to buy furnishings for his apartment and register for a library card. Still, he has old haunts; he has memories here, and they are good and bright. They don’t belie what this city would become to him later, the story bitter on Ilya’s tongue as he recounted it to Shane, reading from his composition notebook.

No; Montreal is still good in his mind. Still his. The old stone buildings and steep, hilled sidewalks and corner deps where he could grab a sports drink after his run. The French! The hurried bustle of locals, the lazy marvelling of tourists. Students with baguettes and paper cups of wine, textbooks splayed on picnic blankets in Parc Jeanne-Mance.

He finds it thrilling to show his children the places he knows, to tell them excitedly about the history made at the Olympic Stadium and to hold their hands hiking up Mont Royal, sunlight dappling their faces through the leaves. They buy steaming-warm bagels from the counter at Fairmount, even though the summer sun bears down on them; and then they walk next door for ice cream cones – scoops of salted-butter and mango, a combination J.J. had introduced him to when they’d come here during his rookie pre-season, because it reminded him of a childhood visit to Haiti. They tour the Biodôme; Lidiya lets out a delighted shriek as a crowd of ibises crosses their path. They walk the stone streets of Old Town and stop to listen to a busker playing something soulful and captivating on alto sax. They ride the Métro through colourful, geometric stations and duck inside the athletic building at McGill, searching the photos on the walls until Ilya recognizes David, young and carefree, hoisting a trophy.

And the more he shows them, the more he tells them, these three hearts that beat outside of his body, who he wants to tell and show everything, wants them to know every bit of his love for this place, the hope it had held for a career, for a path that had led to their very existence – the more he misses this place he never really lived, this life he never really began.

Ilya barely had to pull any strings. Retired Shane Hollander, Canadian hero of the summer, could have the keys to City Hall if he wanted. So they arrive at Centre Bell, the administrative entrance, and are welcomed inside by a receptionist speaking in rapid, enraptured French.

They are shown into the home team locker room. Instinctually, Shane finds his stall. It’s not his now, of course; there’s an unfamiliar name on the brass plate. Still. He sits in front of it and laces up his skates. He kneels to help Niko and Lidiya – left then right; a fist tapped on each toe.

They set out onto the ice.

This is the ice that made him who he became. Ice that was supposed to have been his home, maybe, forever. But nothing had turned out the way it was supposed to. He watches Niko and Lidiya push off and glide, Ilya circling them with long, intrinsic strides, chirping gently; a solar system that he will happily orbit for the rest of his life.

Shane finds himself near the blue line and something flashes through his mind. More vivid than a memory; it’s sensory, fight or flight. This is where he had been, when it happened. Must be. Where he’d fallen and lost it all.

He blinks, the bright lights suddenly dazing him. He crouches down, lets his feet slip out from under him and lies back onto the ice. Cold seeps into his back, his shoulders, his scalp.

White lights, red lights. Eyes closed but everything is fireworks.

He remembers and he doesn’t. His heart pounds but he’s not sad or scared or panicking. It’s something else. He can’t explain it, can’t quite grasp onto it until it boils up into his throat and tightens around his lungs and swells through his heart, bilious and acidic and relentless. He’s angry.

He’s hurt.

“Papa. Is Dad okay?” Lidiya’s voice. He knows he should get up, that he’s worrying them, but he can’t bring himself to. His body is heavy with feeling.

Ilya, now. “Shane! Shane, are you alright?” The coarse scraping of blades nearing him, stopping short.

He opens his eyes. There he is, Ilya, silhouetted against the bright arena lights, an eclipse, an omen, a miracle.

“Ilya,” he says into the cold air, and watches relief rush over his husband’s face. Ilya leans over him, offers a hand and pulls him up. Shane grunts.

“You’re okay?” He’s still holding Shane’s hand.

He shakes his head; his chest is tight with something urgent and irritated and regretful. “I’m not okay. I’m mad at you. You—you hurt me.”

“What do you mean?” He’s not defensive; he’s quiet, desperate to understand, eyes focused, jaw set.

Shane is breathing heavily now, trying to control what’s roiling in him, inexplicable and desolate. “You. You didn’t kiss me.”

“I kiss you all the time.”

“I gave you a chance. I stood there trying to say goodbye. Fuck.” Shane looks away, tightens his grip on Ilya’s hand as the shape of the words rises to his tongue and sprouts into something harshly clear. A tuxedo. An elevator. “In Las Vegas. You didn’t fucking kiss me.”

“Swear jar!” Niko calls.

“Not now, Carrot Sticks.”

“Shane—” Ilya breathes.

“Shut up.” He tugs sharply on Ilya’s hand, the force of it bringing them both forward, the toes of their skates meeting with a hollow click. And he leans forward and kisses him, desperate, breathless, angry and broken and put back together again. Ilya devours the kiss, hungry, familiar, the curve of his smile pressing against Shane’s jaw, hopeful and wild.

It’s a really good kiss. Maybe the best one. He’ll remember it for a long time.

Chapter 19: Epilogue I: Permanent

Chapter Notes

BROOKLYN

MAY 2033

“This came in the mail, Coach,” Luis says, dropping a heavy manila envelope on the counter. He makes his way to the pantry and pulls out Pringles, Oreos, and a sleeve of Ritz. Somehow, he’s already eating all three, before Scott can intervene with a piece of goddamn fruit. “Can I go to the park with Milo tonight? There’s a pick-up game. It’s kids from my old school. Prof said to ask you.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll take you after homework.” Scott looks the teenager up and down, this kid who misses his friends, who eats junk food like he breathes air, who wears sarcasm like armour, who explains memes to them with the patronizing air of a kindergarten teacher. And he feels a fondness that’s something he hasn’t let himself feel in their years of fostering, something dangerous, something – perhaps – permanent.

Coach and Prof, he calls them, and it feels awfully close to being called dad.

Luis brings his armful of snacks to his room and closes the door; music tumbles down the hall, something bass-heavy and rhythmic. “Turn it down,” Scott calls, but not angrily. Never angry. Just, grateful.

He turns his attention to the envelope, one of those padded parcels lined with bubble wrap. He slices through the adhesive with his finger and shakes the contents onto the counter. And he laughs.

It’s a book. Hardcover.

He opens it to the dedication page and reads, not noticing the smile that forms on his lips.

To Shane, Kolya, and Lidochka, my universe, whom I love more than hockey

To Yuna and David, who taught me what family feels like

Моей маме, Ирине, моему путеводному свету

And to Scott Hunter, who paved the way

There’s a signature scrawled across the page in Sharpie, large and ostentatious Cyrillic. Above that, a handwritten note:

I am better at writing memoirs than you. Also at hockey. Your Kip can read it to you since your eyes are so bad from being old.

“Fucking asshole,” Scott mutters to himself. But he doesn’t mean it.

Chapter End Notes

A little bit of bonus content because I absolutely did not want this to become crossover - but the pull quote on the cover of Ilya's book is for sure this:

“A seminal work in both sports memoir and queer literature. Achingly beautiful, traversing personal tragedy, geopolitics, and the triumph of love at the pinnacle of athletic achievement.”
—Trent Crimm, Author, The Richmond Way

Chapter 20: Epilogue II: Eternity

Chapter Notes

OTTAWA

SEPTEMBER 2021

I googled you.

No. Nope! No. Too creepy. Backspace backspace backspace.

Why was this so hard? It shouldn’t be so hard to write a letter to some kid. Shane dropped his head to the desk and groaned.

“What are you doing?” Ilya asked, appearing around the corner.

“I’m writing back to that kid,” Shane said into the desk. “In Idaho.”

“Baby gay hockey player?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ilya stepped into the study and brought a hand to Shane’s back, reassuring, steady. “You don’t have to write back to everyone. There are a lot of unanswered letters in The Box.”

They had taken to calling it that, the capital letters almost audibly implied, reverent – this growing collection of paper and ink that bore the weight of so much hope and heartbreak. A groundswell.

Shane sat up now, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Yeah, I know. But I have to write back to this one.”

Ilya nodded, exhaling. He knew. He understood.

“I don’t know what to tell him.” Shane frowned, shook his head. “No, I do know. I just don’t know how to say it.”

From behind the chair, Ilya grasped Shane’s shoulders, squeezing gently. He bent down, kissing the top of his head. “You will find a way.”

And he said it with such conviction, such quiet, unquestioning faith, that Shane became scared Ilya could see the reason this mattered so much to him, this letter, specifically – beyond the similarities, beyond the path that this lovesick boy in Idaho was about to walk, so much like to his own – that maybe Ilya could read the elating, terrifying thought that had formed in his mind earlier that afternoon—

The Pikes, in town for a pre-season game against Ottawa. Lunch in Shane and Ilya’s backyard, children tumbling through piles of leaves, laughter like butterflies ringing beneath the blue sky. Over the years, Shane had often looked to Hayden and Jackie and thought, I want that. The ease of their love, the openness, the obviousness, like they weren’t meant to be with anyone else. Like it was just a fact of nature.

But that afternoon, he had looked to them and thought something else, something much more specific and very, very alarming: I want that.

The laughter. The small, bright voices that assert themselves so boldly in the world, unapologetic and loving and alive. It hit him like a punch in the gut.

I want kids.

It had never been a consideration because it had never been a possibility. You don’t dream about things if you can’t imagine them first. But now here they were – same city, same team, who would’ve ever thought? A shared home, truly theirs, for the first time in the eternity they had loved each other. And he could see it, suddenly, clearly. A small, important someone taking up space in their lives that they would create willingly, lovingly, two moons to a blazing sun.

And now here was a kid who needed him. Scared to be himself, scared to love someone out loud, scared to disappoint his parents and betray a legacy. And he couldn’t even write the kid a fucking letter.

---------------

It took him two weeks to finish the letter.

He gave up on typing. It was too easy to erase progress, second-guessing every keystroke. He bought some stationery at Indigo, the nice kind of paper that feels sort of like fabric.

And slowly, he wrote.

And when it was done, he sealed it into an envelope with some tokens he thought the kid might like – an autographed photo, a Centaurs sticker – and he brought it to Canada Post, to make sure he had the right postage to get it across the border.

And then he came home, finding Ilya on the sofa scrolling on his phone, and Ilya looked up at him as he entered, and smiled this casual, familiar smile like a thousand times before, only now it was his smile to come home to. And wasn’t that something.

Shane sat on the sofa and Ilya made room for him like instinct, arms finding each other, Shane’s head finding that spot on Ilya’s chest where everything felt warm and balanced.

“Hey,” he said into Ilya’s shoulder, quietly, but firmly. “I want kids.”

And then Ilya said pretty much the most terrifying thing he could have said, besides no.

“I do, too.”

---------------

Dear Colin,

Thank you for your letter. I don’t mean this to sound strange, but I looked you up online. Something about the way you mentioned Seattle so specifically, it got me thinking that maybe this is more than a dream for you. Sure enough, it looks like you’re out there making some noise in AAA. Good for you, man. There’s some tape on YouTube of the Rocky Mountain Championships. You have some serious skills. I know it’s hard to be on a team with players so much older than you. I hope they’re treating you right.

You wrote in your letter that you hope to be brave one day, and I just want to say that I think you’re brave right now. Just showing up, playing the game, is brave. Reaching out is brave. Loving someone is brave, even if you never tell them.

I wasn’t that much older than you when I first met Ilya. I was still in high school. He would tell you it was love at first sight, but I would say it was something else. Trust came first. Respect. Admiration. It sounds like you have something like that with Aaron, a real friendship. I understand why you don’t think you can tell him. And that’s really up to you. I’m not very good at giving advice and I don’t know if telling him would make things difficult or unhappy or unsafe, for him or for you. But what you do have with him already, if you mutually care for each other and trust one another, I think that’s something to be cherished. You are very lucky to have him.

I know what it’s like to bear the weight of others’ expectations. I think what I’ve learned over the years is that my own expectations for myself were always the heaviest. I’m sure you’ve followed the news around me and Ilya, and you’ll know that we defied the world’s expectations in just about every possible way. From our teams and the league to my parents, we were so fearful to be ourselves and to betray those expectations. And when we finally did – even though it was in a way we couldn’t totally control – what I learned is that, the people who mattered most were there for us. They stayed. They threw their expectations out the door, and they stayed. Not everyone was like that, of course. And that was hard. But it was worth it, when fear stopped getting in our way, to have each other, and to have the people with us who trusted us to forge a path that no one, not even ourselves, would expect.

I have a really happy life. After, despite, and because of everything that happened. I would not change anything. And Colin, I’m going to make it my personal mission to make sure that by the time you get to your draft season, this league is a much stronger, more welcoming place. You can love hockey, and Aaron, and your parents, and your grandparents, and your brother, and none of those things are in conflict. You can love anyone and anything you want in your life, and still have a future in this sport. I believe you can do it. Just tighten up your backhand, you could use a little more speed. Then you’ll be unstoppable.

Ilya and I receive a lot of letters. We don’t always get a chance to answer them. So if you want to write again, you’ll find my personal email on the business card enclosed.

Thanks for writing and good luck with everything.

Sincerely,

Shane Hollander

P.S. on the backhand – look up game 6 Boston v. San Francisco in the 2014 playoffs on YouTube, Ilya scored in the last two minutes. You’ll see what I’m talking about in terms of speed. It’s just a timing thing. You’ll get it. You’re already almost there.

Chapter End Notes

That's it! We did it! Thank you so much for reading, kudos, comments and support along the way. It means a lot and I really am so grateful :)

Update: There is now a companion piece up called Octobers, I hope you like it!

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